During the first years of Communist rule in Armenia, G. Melik-Dadayan was one of the few local photographers interested in documenting the changing reality of Yerevan. Unfortunately, little is known about the background of the photographer. It is not clear, for example, when and where he began to take photographs and in what capacity. Surviving examples of his works primarily relate to the urban environment and monuments of Yerevan and were taken between 1925-1935. Of particular interest are Dadayan’s depictions of Yerevan’s Old districts - Kond, Hrazdan Gorge and Ghantar – remnants of the pre-revolutionary city that were rapidly disappearing.

Melik-Dadayan’s photographs are not just plain photographic records. A developed aesthetic sensibility is clearly at work here, vividly present in some of his street and architectural photographs which betray a gently poetic and literary spirit. In such works, the photographer has tried to reflect the specificities of Yerevan’s traditional lifestyle and the processes of its modernization.

Vigen Galstyan, 2018