Irina Grigoryan is one of the many young, self-taught women photographers to have emerged in recent years in Armenia.  After studying graphic arts at the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts, Grigoryan has increasingly turned her attention to photography. Unlike the majority of her Armenian contemporaries, Grigoryan works exclusively in the genre of artistic or ‘subjective’ photography. She is also one of the very few young practitioners to explore analogue photographic and printing techniques, working in a makeshift darkroom. Grigoryan’s themes often revolve around the notion of female subjectivity, emotional landscape and memory. In 2011 Irina was the recipient of Lusadaran Foundation’s second prize for the series ‘Gortsaranayin’ (2010) which was included in the exhibition ‘Industrial Symphony: photography and the post-industrial age’.

Vigen Galstyan, 2016