The main evidence of Petros Harutyunyan's photographic work is today limited to a group of photographs kept in the archives of the Armenian History Museum. They depict the collective farm works in Armenia’s southernmost city of Meghri and its surrounding areas, as well as photographs of Meghri’s residents who were interesting from an ‘ethnographical’ perspective. Made between the 1920s-30s, these documentary images are remarkable and unique testimonies about the socialist transformation of this historic Armenian town. Harutyunyan's approach is surprisingly adherent to the principlesof international, early 20th century ‘social-realist’ photography, according to which the photographer did not decontextualize his subjects from their everyday surroundings and socio-cultural environment. Unlike the Soviet-Armenian photography made during the Stalinist and neo-nationalist periods, the works of this photographer from the peripheries representing the reality of collective labour without romantic or propagandistic enhancements. Instead, Harutyunyan's subtle photographs duly documentthesteps taken by this conservatively traditionalist Middle Eastern community on its difficult path towards modernisation.

Harutyunyan was one of the very few documentary photographers stationed in the Syunik region in the first decades after the establishment of Soviet Union. Judging from the reportage-like aspects of his photographs, one can assume that he also corresponded with the local press organs.

Vigen Galstyan, 2016