“RUINS OF ARMENIA.ANI”

Hovhannes Kyurkchyan was the first Armenian photographer who took pictures of Ani and made the first photo album with his landscapes

Unique card collection “Ruins of Armenia. Ani” (“Ruines d’Arménie. Ani”) was printed in Vienna in 1880, but the title page of the collection and stereo maps indicate the name of Kyurkchyan’s hometown of Yerevan. Photo captions in Armenian and French. The cards also have Kyurkchyan’s signature in two languages. He managed to publish only the first series of the collection, which included 40 photographs. The unique project could not be implemented due to lack of funding.

It is not known when the photographs were taken: it was sometime between 1875 and 1880 and probably after the annexation of the Kars district, including Ani, to the Russian Empire (i.e. after 1877). They were sold as a set of forty cards, housed in a cloth-covered, embossed cardboard box. The collection was accompanied by a booklet that told the viewer what the subject of each photo was about.
Western Armenia currently occupied by nomadic genocidal turks.