After graduating from Yerevan’s Polytechnic Institute and receiving an engineer-technician’s diploma, Boris (Bakur) Karapetyan entered an entirely different field, working mainly in literature and the arts. He has been a member of the Writers' Union of Armenia since 1986.(1) Since 1967, he has published numerous short stories and articles in republican press, and, after becoming closely involved in the Karabagh liberation movement in 1988, authored a number of documentary films that were shown on Armenia’s national television. Karapetyan has also explored the creative possibilities of painting and photography, and has continuously shown his works at many group and solo exhibitions between 1970s-2000s.

Karapetyan started to use the camera at the young age along with his experiments in literature. His landscape and genre works were first published in Garun (Spring) magazine at the end of the 1960s. In these black-and-white shots imbued with poetic spirit, Karapetyan sought to reveal the novelistic aspects of photography. He was particularly interested in exploring themes related to childhood and the natural environment. The lyrical mood of these photographs leads not to a critically pointed realism, but to a symbolically narrated treatment of the subject. By emphasizing the irrevocable unity between humans and the earth, the artist sought to portrait nature as a sublime and nurturing cradle.

Reproduced on Garun’s pages, these images acquired an unquestionably patriotic flavour. This direction would become more prominent at the turn of the 1990s, with Karapetyan’s films and photographic series dedicated to his native Karabakh.(2)

1) 'Bakur Karapetyan', www.wua.am, 01.07.2014, http://wua.am/բակուր-բորիս-ավանեսի-կարապետյան/

2) Vanik Santryan, 'Bakur Karapetyani Yot Kyanky' [The Seven Lives of Bakur Karapetyan, in Armenian], www.hhpress.am, 17.06.2011, http://www.hhpress.am/?sub=hodv&hodv=20110617_9&flag=am

Vigen Galstyan, 2016