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New York Times
June 15 2013
My Father, the Stranger
By DIANA MARKOSIAN
Published: June 15, 2013
I KNOCKED on the door of a stranger.
I had traveled halfway around the world to see him.
My father.
I was 7 years old when I last saw him. Nearly 15 years later, I stood
in the courtyard of his home in Armenia. My brother remembered where
our father lived. It was the same gray, decaying Soviet-era building
my parents lived in after they married.
You could say that I had come home. But that wasn't how it felt.
I have few memories of my father. I remember us dancing together and
him giving me my first doll. I also remember him leaving. He liked to
leave. He was good at it. Sometimes he would be gone for months at a
time, and then unexpectedly he would be back.
Until, one day, it was our turn to leave.
My mother woke me up and told me to pack my belongings. I remember her
gripping my hand as we made our way to the airport in Moscow. She said
we were going on a trip. The next day, we arrived at our new home,
California.
We hardly ever spoke of my father. I had no pictures of him, and over
time forgot what he looked like.
When I would ask my mother about him, she would look at me,
disappointed: `Forget him. He's gone,' she'd say.
But he wasn't. He was still there, in our old home. The inside
resembled a museum, the walls covered with my grandfather's oil
paintings and faded family pictures. Each one revealed glimpses of my
father's presence in my life. My parents looked so happy, so in love.
All I ever knew was my mother's anger and disappointment toward him.
I felt robbed of a relationship with a father, and somehow I wanted to
make up for the lost years. For nearly a year, I lived with him.
Often, we spent our mornings together, my father sitting across the
table from me, telling me stories as if we were old friends.
I had forgotten so much about him - the shape of his face, the sound
of his voice, the way he laughed. It felt special to be near my father
- and yet often he was consumed, with his writing, with his own
father, and with his new family; not too long ago, he had another
child, a little girl who lives with her mother. He doesn't live with
her. He visits.
I should have been happy for him, but when I watched him play with his
daughter, it felt like a bruise someone kept pressing. I wanted to
escape, but instead I photographed them together. In some moments, he
would open up, reveal more of his personality, allowing me to enter
his life. I often didn't know how to behave around him. Sometimes he
would watch me brush my hair or reach to embrace me. When he did, I
would pull away. I didn't know what he was to me, and more important,
what I was to him.
My father shared his poetry with me. His words told me what he
couldn't otherwise. There's pain there I understand. A longing for
more. That is something we share.
Slowly I am piecing together a picture of a familiar stranger. In some
ways, he is no less absent to me than when I was a child. But through
these images, I now have a glimpse of a man who should have been my
father.
Diana Markosian is a documentary photographer and writer based in Myanmar.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/my-father-the-stranger.html?_r=0
From: Baghdasarian
June 15 2013
My Father, the Stranger
By DIANA MARKOSIAN
Published: June 15, 2013
I KNOCKED on the door of a stranger.
I had traveled halfway around the world to see him.
My father.
I was 7 years old when I last saw him. Nearly 15 years later, I stood
in the courtyard of his home in Armenia. My brother remembered where
our father lived. It was the same gray, decaying Soviet-era building
my parents lived in after they married.
You could say that I had come home. But that wasn't how it felt.
I have few memories of my father. I remember us dancing together and
him giving me my first doll. I also remember him leaving. He liked to
leave. He was good at it. Sometimes he would be gone for months at a
time, and then unexpectedly he would be back.
Until, one day, it was our turn to leave.
My mother woke me up and told me to pack my belongings. I remember her
gripping my hand as we made our way to the airport in Moscow. She said
we were going on a trip. The next day, we arrived at our new home,
California.
We hardly ever spoke of my father. I had no pictures of him, and over
time forgot what he looked like.
When I would ask my mother about him, she would look at me,
disappointed: `Forget him. He's gone,' she'd say.
But he wasn't. He was still there, in our old home. The inside
resembled a museum, the walls covered with my grandfather's oil
paintings and faded family pictures. Each one revealed glimpses of my
father's presence in my life. My parents looked so happy, so in love.
All I ever knew was my mother's anger and disappointment toward him.
I felt robbed of a relationship with a father, and somehow I wanted to
make up for the lost years. For nearly a year, I lived with him.
Often, we spent our mornings together, my father sitting across the
table from me, telling me stories as if we were old friends.
I had forgotten so much about him - the shape of his face, the sound
of his voice, the way he laughed. It felt special to be near my father
- and yet often he was consumed, with his writing, with his own
father, and with his new family; not too long ago, he had another
child, a little girl who lives with her mother. He doesn't live with
her. He visits.
I should have been happy for him, but when I watched him play with his
daughter, it felt like a bruise someone kept pressing. I wanted to
escape, but instead I photographed them together. In some moments, he
would open up, reveal more of his personality, allowing me to enter
his life. I often didn't know how to behave around him. Sometimes he
would watch me brush my hair or reach to embrace me. When he did, I
would pull away. I didn't know what he was to me, and more important,
what I was to him.
My father shared his poetry with me. His words told me what he
couldn't otherwise. There's pain there I understand. A longing for
more. That is something we share.
Slowly I am piecing together a picture of a familiar stranger. In some
ways, he is no less absent to me than when I was a child. But through
these images, I now have a glimpse of a man who should have been my
father.
Diana Markosian is a documentary photographer and writer based in Myanmar.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/my-father-the-stranger.html?_r=0
From: Baghdasarian