Father Land is a consciously complicated book. Here the photographer son and the writer father cohabit and claim not only the space of the book but also the attention of the reader.
- Taline Voskeritchian
Via Asbarez.com
Ara Oshagan is a documentary photographer. He is also my cousin. His father, Vahé Oshagan, and my mother, Anahid Oshagan Voskeritchian, are brother and sister. I must mention our familial tie in the spirit of full disclosure as I am about to sit with his recently published book of photographs, Father Land (powerHouse Books, NY), to write. But rest assured: If there is the appearance of a conflict of interest here, it is a ruse. True, we are related to each other by blood and friendship and common interests, but we are (and have been for some years now) each other’s interrogators; at times, each other’s corrective lens; at times, each other’s critic. In addition to breaking bread at the same table many times, we have thought together mostly in Western Armenian, our ancestral language, but also, of late, our “language of return.” And almost always, we have been each other’s mirror of refraction and congruence, agreement and divergence. Ara Oshagan’s Afterword to the book follows this post.