Growing up surrounded with the photographs by his famous father, photographer Nemrut, Herbert Baghdasaryan's relationship with photography began from early childhood years. Shortly after joining the State Institute of Agriculture in 1954, Baghdasaryan decided to abandon his studies and continue in his father's steps instead.(1) Already at the end of the 1950s, he was corresponding with some of the most widely distributed Armenian periodicals, such as the newspapers Yerekoyan Yerevan (Evening Yerevan) and Communist and journals Sovetakan Hayastan (Soviet Armenia), Arvest (Art) and Hayastani Ashkhatavoruhi (Female Worker of Armenia). In tandem with photojournalistic assignments, Baghdasaryan also actively participated in local and international exhibitions. In 1975, the prestigious Interpress Photography Competition held  in the Federal Republic of Germany, awarded one of its main prizes to Baghdasaryan’s and Rudik Hakobyan’s co-authored photograph ‘The Grandson has Returned’.(2) Baghdasaryan has also made a notable contribution to the development of the photo-book format in Armenia, and his 1967 album ‘Symphony in Stone’ can be considered as a major achievement in photo-related Armenian publishing during the 1960s. In fact this decade was of seminal importance for the photographer, as it revealed the gamut of his creative abilities in full. The works produced during this period are marked with unexpectedly daring formal solutions that seem to forthrightly challenge the monotone photographic literalness of the previous decades.

Baghdasaryan portrayed Armenia’s public life and people’s private lifestyles from almost every angle. Having begun with agricultural themes in the 1950s, his focus moved to cultural and, later, political arenas. By making use of the formal devices drawn from 1920s avant-garde photography, he earnestly tried to liberate the documentary format from the restrictive shackles of ‘factuality’ and ‘impartiality’. Regardless of their subject matter, the photographer’s best images explicitly state the author’s personal insights. In these photographs, the artist emphasizes the fundamental importance of light and space in the process of representing and perceiving all phenomena. The genres of industrial and even sports photography, were especially conducive as material for studying these aspects of the medium, and the latter, according to journalist Levon Azroyan, was ‘Herbert’s passion’.(3)

Examining the boundaries of photographic imagery, Baghdasaryan eventually approached the edges of abstract art, as in the photograph ‘Urban Symphony’, reproduced on the January1968 issue cover of Sovetakan Arvest (Soviet Art) magazine. Here, theentireload of the meaning-content is primarily assumed by the title of the work, as well as the magazine itself, which imbues this self-analyticalphotographwith the status of an artwork and an ideological function. With these artistic ambitionsin tow, Baghdasaryan's photography of those years, nevertheless, served clear political agendas such as the dictums of cultural openness and technological progress initiated by Nikita Khrushchev's short-lived ‘Thaw’. Baghdasaryan's overseas photo-reportages were accorded a similar purpose, tasked as they were with finding new points of connection between socialist and capitalist societies.(4)

The photographer’s practice during the 1970s-80s, is marked by a sharp turn towards the social and openly politicised roles of photography. This journalistic, news-based direction became dominant for Baghdasaryan from 1985 onwards, when he joined ‘Armenpress’ news agency as the organisation’s chief photo-editor.  After nearly seventeen years in this position, Baghdasaryan - together with his younger brother, Melik - co-founded ‘Photolur’ photo-agency, which today continues to be led by the younger members of this photographic dynasty.

1) Vahan Kochar, Hay Lusankarichner [Armenian Photographers, in Armenian], self-published, Yerevan, 2007, p.111

2) ‘Herbert Baghdasaryan’ [in Armenian], http://ypc.am/people/բաղդասարյան-հերբերտ/?lang=hy

3) Levon Azroyan, ‘Herbert Baghdasaryan’[in Armenian],www.168.am, 28.07.2017,https://168.am/2017/07/28/824685.html

4) Herbert Baghdaarian, ‘Akntartayin Fransian’ [‘Snapshot France’, in Armeian], Sovetakan Arvest, no.8, 1966, pp.62-63

Vigen Galstyan, 2018