In the second half of the 1980s, a group of young people in Armenia with creative aspirations, became interested in photography as a modern and experimental tool for self-expression. Christopher Nuridjanyan was one of them. According to the artist, he began taking photographs in 1989 with the idea of ​​creating ‘something that was new and as yet, not proposed.’(1) The first small selection of his photographs published in a 1991 issue of Arvest magazine was promising in that respect.(2 ) Staged with evocative lighting arrangements and allegorical compositions, the mysterious scenes in Nuridjanyan's images are loosely affiliated with general tendencies of international, post-modern photography in the 1980s. Their nostalgic gaze reminds of the decadent atmosphere and iconography of silent film melodramas of the 1910s and 1920s. The photographer offers no historiographical or culturally specific frameworks, but instead, presents a ‘peculiar confession’ full of erotic tensions.(3)

Nurijanyan's current creative efforts are not related to photography.

1) Christopher Nuridjanyan, ‘Christopher Nuridjanyan’ [in Armenian], Arvest, nos.2-3

2) ibid.

3) ibid.

Vigen Galstyan, 2016