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Art Amid the Ruins

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  • Art Amid the Ruins

    Washingtonian
    February 2009


    Art Amid the Ruins

    She's been shot at and beaten. Through it all, this photojournalist
    captured amazing images of war-and peace.

    By Denise Kersten Wills

    Alexandra Avakian grew up around movie cameras. Her mother was an
    actress, her father a filmmaker.

    But Avakian, who spent much of her childhood in New York City, knew by
    age nine that she wanted to work with a different kind of
    camera. While on a break from Sarah Lawrence College, she shot a photo
    essay about the heroin addicts, aspiring actors, and other residents
    of a transient hotel in Greenwich Village.

    Fascinated by her Armenian family's stories of escaping upheavals in
    Iran and Russia, she longed to cover wars and revolutions. "Even when
    I slept, I often had dreams of working in a foreign city in the midst
    of an uprising, with demonstrators and fires in the street," she
    writes in her new book, Windows of the Soul: My Journeys in the Muslim
    World, a memoir with photographs.

    In 1986, she went to Haiti during the overthrow of President
    Jean-Claude Duvalier. "I was so frightened on the way," says Avakian,
    48, who now lives in Virginia with her husband and son. "But as soon
    as I set foot in that place, I was like a fish in the ocean. I didn't
    feel afraid."

    She spent much of the next 20 years in the Middle East, on assignment
    for National Geographic, the New York Times Magazine,Time, and other
    publications. She traveled with Yasir Arafat, spent eight weeks with
    Hezbollah, and visited refugee camps in Somalia and Sudan.

    She was shot at and beaten, and she saw starvation and
    violence. Sometimes she captured moments of joy. One highlight was
    visiting Iran, her paternal grandfather's homeland, in 1998. She went
    to the adobe house where her grandfather had lived as a child and
    tasted the walnuts at an orchard her great-grandfather had owned.

    What did she learn amid wars and revolutions? "You see who people
    really are," Avakian says. "You can see incredible bravery in a little
    old lady or cowardice in a seemingly strong man."

    For a Q&A with Avakian and a gallery of her photos, visit
    washingtonian.com/avakian.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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