Like many other photographers who started working professionally in Soviet Armenia, Gagik Harutyunyan largely taught himself on the job.

After a few years spent in various factories as a machinist, Harutyunyan made the radical decision to quit his well-paying job and devote himself to the uncertain career as a photographer. He began as a correspondent of ‘Komsomolets’ newspaper in 1971. This soon led to a job at the ‘Organisation of friendship and cultural ties with foreign countries’ (AOKS). This enviable position allowed Harutyunyan to travel extensively in Europe and even Africa. Many of his extensive photo-stories  were regularly published in practically all the major Armenian journals such as ‘Sovetakan Hayastan’, ‘Armenia Today’ and ‘Garun’. He is one of the very few Soviet Armenian photographers to have opened solo shows devoted to artistic photography. In 1981, he began collaborating with

While Harurtyunian has photographed all aspects of life in Armenia, his favoured subject was unquestionably the Armenian village and its inhabitants. Seen today, many of these photographs from the 1970s and 80s seem idyllic and almost over-romanticised. What interested the photographer was the poetic relationship between people and their environment, that emphasised the spiritual in everyday life.

Distancing himself from any overt political commentary, Harutynian was, nevertheless, an astute observer of historical transformations. What sets his approach apart from that of his contemporaries is the length and the depth of study he brought to each subject. Often documenting the after-effects of events, such as the 1988 earthquake or the war in Nagorno Karabagh, he aimed to capture the bigger truths about the passage of time through the exploration of ‘insignificant detail’.

In the last stages of his career, Harutyunyan’s work assumed a darker tone. Combining elements of symbolism with an expressionist style, the photographer gradually abandoned straight documentary, devoting himself to subjective and conceptual modes of photography. While these efforts were received with some enthusiasm amidst the artistic milieu, it became difficult for Harutyunyan to survive financially. Unwilling to compromise and not seeing a different way out, Harutyunyan finally made the painful decision to abandon his métier at the turn of the 21st century.

His legacy left a palpable influence  on the younger generation of Armenian photographers and his work is currently being reassessed as a major contribution to late 20th century Armenian art.

Vigen Galstyan, 2016