YEREVAN, JULY 28, ARMENPRESS. The Guardian presented a 55 year old French-Armenian photographer Antoine Agoudjian's best photograph in its “my best shot” ranks. In the photograph an Armenian man dances for his lost son.

“I was a dancer before I was a photographer. Born in France, the grandchild of Armenian genocide survivors, dance was one of the few ways I could connect with a homeland I had never known.  When I danced as an Armenian peasant, I became an Armenian peasant. It was a way to animate the stories my grandparents told. Dance inadvertently led me to photography, but the two had more in common than many think. Each combined artistic vision and technique. Each was about telling a story, “Armenpress” reports, the photographer said.

“In 1988, an earthquake shook Armenia. Around 40,000 died and hundreds of thousands were displaced. I headed there with a humanitarian organisation and took my camera. Photography was a way to bear witness to the aftermath of the quake, but it soon became more than that: an archaeological enquiry into Armenian identity, culture and memory since the 1915 genocide.

Photography became my way of exploring this history. But I learned quickly that reportage couldn’t tell the stories I needed to tell. Photography interested me; photojournalism did not because it could not explore what I came to learn was the heart of Armenian identity: poetry, communion with the land, and ancient folk traditions. Every time I shoot, I’m face-to-face with a history that traumatised me as a child. In those circumstances, objectivity is a myth”, he said.

“In 1998, I found myself in Aparan, a large town an hour’s drive from Armenia’s capital, Yerevan. A local dance troupe was performing that evening, in the open air, with most of the suburb in attendance. The old, the young, everyone was present, sitting hunched on stools or cross-legged on the floor, transfixed. In the background, small mountains and jagged cliffs framed the scene.

As soon as I took my first shot, an old man approached me. Tears streamed down his face. He told me that his son had died. That he had been electrocuted, that he was his pride and joy, and that I looked just like him. He broke into sobs and moved towards me with outstretched arms. His name was Ishran.

I asked if he would dance for me, and he began dancing. The troupe paused and perched on an outcrop of rocks in the background. It was beautiful, not because the man is beautiful, but because he represents something deep inside the collective consciousness of the Armenian community: a celebratory resilience in the face of overwhelming loss”, he said.

Concerning the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, the photographer said every other state must follow the Bundestag’s decision.

“The more Erdoğan denies us, the stronger we become. We know what it is to disappear. And we resist that against all odds", Antoine Agoudjian stated.