A member of Armenpress News Agency, photojournalist Ruben Atayan published his works in numerous Armenian-language newspapers and periodicals. His photographs are primarily news reportages and observational studies that depict the economic and cultural life of Soviet Armenia, its youth and celebrities. Amidst Atayan's published photographs those from the magazine ‘Hayastani Ashkhatavoruhi’ (Armenian Woman Worker) are especially memorable. In these staged portraits and documentary reports representing Armenia’s working women, the photographer tried to create a modern and emancipated image for his female subjects. Nevertheless, Atayan’s photographs are imbued by romantic and poetic mood and the photographer often did not avoid the opportunity to turn these women into objects of aesthetic contemplation. Outside his reportage work, Atayan also worked on his personal, creative projects. Related to the poetic-documentary tradition of Soviet photography these thematic scenes and landscapes are usually address some emotional or psychological state through high contrasts and dramatically cropped compositions.

Vigen Galstyan, 2016