Alexander Arutyunov, who appeared on the arena in the 1960s, is one of the prominent representatives of the Soviet-era ‘straight’ documentary photography. As noted by writer Irina Zhotova and photographer Yuri Mechitov, his work had a profound effect on the following generations of Tbilisi-based photographers.(1)

During his entire career Arutunov remained mostly an independent photographer. Collaborating with the periodical press in Georgia, as well Armenia and Russia, he largely avoided becoming a salaried staff photographer, preferring instead the opportunity to focus on his preferredsubjects. These mainly related to the everyday life of Tbilisi’s multicultural and multilayered population and Georgia’s picturesque rural environment. Inspired by the traditions of classical European documentary photography (especially by Henry Cartier Bresson and Brassai), Arutyunyan kept his focus on the cultural and psychological world of the ordinary person. The relationship between the individual and his environment is presented through ‘soft’ contrasts that delicately expose the contradictions and conflicts between Soviet and local culture as well as tradition and modernity. Nevertheless, Arutyunov's works were devoid of polemics or overtly politicized views and the photographer - even in his most intimate images - appears as an unbiased observer. In that sense, these works are directly related to the quest for the new socialist realism during the Khruschevian ‘Thaw’ era.

From anartistic point of view Arutyunov’s female portraits are particularly memorable. Absorbed in a lyrical atmosphere, each of these images strives for a poetic status by presenting the individual as a psychological mystery. The photographer was also one of the first in the USSR to have worked with naked (primarily female) body.Numerous younger documentary photographers from Armenia – many of whom were born in Tbilisi – were closely acquainted with these works, which Arutyunov generously shared with his colleagues in his studio.

A very prolific artist, Arutyunov took part in almost all major all-union photographic competitions between the 1960s-70s and frequently represented Georgia at various international exhibitions. His photographs have appeared in more than twenty photo-albums published in the USSR, including the influential Photo annual. According to Arutyunov’s close friend Irina Zutzova, after the photographer’s premature death his archive contained over twenty thousand black and white negatives. Most of them were never been published, and their subsequent fate remains unknown.

1) See bibliography

Vigen Galstyan, 2016