← Back to the repository
Journal ArticleOpen Access

Making Space and Community Through Memory: Orphans and Armenian Jerusalem in the Nubar Library's Photographic Archive

Adjemian, Boris and Suciyan, Talin · 2017

Adjemian (director of the AGBU Nubar Library) and Suciyan analyze a body of 1920s–1930s photographs held in Paris to reconstruct how communal space was made in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem. Reading the layered history of post-WWI refugees and orphans alongside older Armenian religious institutions in Palestine, they examine how memory shaped Armenian communal life. The essay is also methodological, reflecting on how historians can build a social history from a visual archive that recovers lives the post-genocide record otherwise forgot or ignored.

Read the publication ↗
Published in
Études arméniennes contemporaines, No. 9 (2017), 'Jerusalem in the Making: Spaces and Communities', pp. 75–113 (Bibliothèque Nubar / AGBU); DOI 10.4000/eac.1129
Year
2017
Language
English
DOI
10.4000/eac.1129

Citation

Adjemian, Boris and Suciyan, Talin 2017. Making Space and Community Through Memory: Orphans and Armenian Jerusalem in the Nubar Library's Photographic Archive. Études arméniennes contemporaines, No. 9 (2017), 'Jerusalem in the Making: Spaces and Communities', pp. 75–113 (Bibliothèque Nubar / AGBU); DOI 10.4000/eac.1129. https://doi.org/10.4000/eac.1129

What this offers a reader

For students

A hands-on example of doing history from photographs, centered on orphans who rebuilt Armenian Jerusalem after the genocide.

For academics

Combines archival social history with methodological reflection on the photographic collection at the Nubar Library.

For the community

The Armenian quarter of Jerusalem, remade by orphans and refugees, seen through pictures kept in Paris.

For a general reader

How survivors and orphans rebuilt an Armenian community in Jerusalem, told through an old photo archive.

Topics

Armenian Jerusalemphotographic archivesgenocide orphanspost-genocide diasporasocial historymemory

Related in the repository

Hamlet after Genocide: The Haunting of Soghomon Tehlirian and Empirical Fabulation
2023 · Journal Article
Pages from Armenian-Canadian History: The Ararat Monthlies, 1926–1929 / Էջեր գանատահայ պատմութենէն. Արարատ ամսաթերթերը (1926–1929)
2023 · Book
Daniel Ohanian's Database of Armenian Orphans and Maids in Canada, 1923–1930
2025 · Institute Publication
Observing South Caucasus' Historical Landscape: An Open Photo Archive. Tools, Activities, and Purposes of the OSCOP Project
2025 · Journal Article

Citation checked against the publisher's record on .