Born in Tehran to Armenian parents, Harruthoonyan is currently based in Toronto, after moving to Canada with his family in 1987. Having studied film and worked as a set designer in number of commercial projects, Harruthoonyan has dedicated himself to photography since 2003. The close association with cinema comes through in his photographs which often take the form of condensed and frozen movements across time and space. Although addressing different genres of photography, from landscape to portraiture, the primary subject of Harruthoonyan’s work is the subconscious and the metaphysical perception of the world. Utilizing re-photography, chemical effects and double exposures, Harruthoonyan’s series create imaginary landscapes where fragmented reality forms entirely new perceptual possibilities.

This alternative, or parallel space, is the space of photography, which in Harruthoonyan’s works is equated with dreamscapes. In every photograph, the viewer is aware of the medium’s ‘body’ – the grain and the emulsion of the film, the spill of the chemicals, the negative exposures that literally turn the real inside out. Even when his photographs depict specific places, such as his Armenian suite ‘The Black Garden’, the resulting images resist our desire for specificity. Echoing masters of surrealist and symbolist photographers such as Man Ray and Minor White, Harruthoonyan’s works play out infinite variations on what we perceive as ubiquitous in nature and culture.

Vigen Galstyan, 2016