Armenak Artsruni moved to Egypt from the Ottoman Empire, before the Armenian Genocide of 1915. According to Maria Golia, Artsruni had apprenticed with the photographer Karapet Pabuchyan at the Alexandria-based studio ‘Nadir’ in the 1920s. In 1930 he moved to Cairo to work in the studio ‘Zola’, after which he launched his independent career, opening ‘Studio Armand’ in Cairo in the mid 1930s. It soon became one of the dozen prominent photographic studios in Cairo – the others being Studio Alban, Van Leo, Angelo and Studio Venus. Artsruni’s speciality was wedding photography, but he was a prolific and talented practitioner working in many genres of studio photography. His subjects included movie stars, sportsmen, Cairo’s bourgeoisie and royalty. Artsruni’s style was flamboyant - as was the custom in the 1940s and 50s, but he had a more naturalistic and straightforward approach than his more famous colleagues. In particular, Artsruni avoided overtly theatrical lighting. The clarity of space and forms in his photographs, makes his subjects both very mundane and surreal at the same time. After his death, Armenak’s son took over the business and continued to work under the same brand name.

Vigen Galstyan, 2016