Born and raised in Detroit, Michelle Andonian has repeatedly addressed Armenia in her work, focusing in particular on the memory of her ancestors who survived the 1915 Armenian Genocide. She began working in photography soon after graduating from high school, making her first steps in the medium at the Detroit Creative Learning Center (CCS). Having finished her studies, Andonian got a position at the Detroit Times as a photojournalist. The particularly memorable series from her reportage work of those years, are those which represent the art and music scene as well as the industrial life of the city. Among these photographs one can also find striking portraits of American cultural and business luminaries of the 1970s and 2000s - Andy Warhol, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and others. Some of these images have been published in the biggest American magazines such as The New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic, and The New Yorker.

Andonian has paid special attention to the industrial past and present of her native city. It is particularly worth mentioning her documentary series that depict Detroit’s gradually declining car-manufacturing industry, whose final demise has affected the city’s economic system and the welfare of Detroit’s population in an irreversible manner. In her recent works, Andonian shows the deserted corners of the city, which had previously throbbed with thousands of workers and currently exist as modern-day ruins slowly being reclaimed by nature.

This melancholic theme is also evoked in Andonian’s Armenian series, which began with the Spitak earthquake in 1988. Having arrived on assignment to Armenia, Andonian spent several months following the rescue missions and the large-scale humanitarian works, while observing the painful attempts of the survivors to return to normal life. Devoid of sharp contrasts, her quiet photographs are dominated by deep empathy towards human suffering and the desire to use photography as a medium of communication. In Andonian's photographs depicting various corners of Armenia, the country is revealed as permeated with sadness but also hope and great poetry. As in her Detroit series, what concerns the photographer here is the relationship between natural, historical and social environments.

Andonian summed up nearly two decades of her photographic work on Armenian subjects in the 2015 photo-book This Picture I Gift. She continues her practice in Detroit, as both a commercial photographer and an independent artist.

Vigen Galstyan, 2016