Obviously, I refrain from wanting to dispense historical facts about Armenian history and its strong religious identity with a few lines. Such an attempt would be presumptuous and decidedly clumsy. There’s plenty of documented information online which I definitely recommend to look for those who may be interested. Rather, I would like to recognize a few aspects that made me reflect during this trip.
The first struck me as an obvious fact already at the moment I formulated it in my mind: as my photography starts to assume a more or less defined style (or at least definable), I am aware that my focus of attraction is people. However, this does not imply that places, objects, or spaces lose importance in my intent. Quite the contrary. They begin to become indispensable for the narrative. Looking at these photos over and over again, I notice that people are almost never isolated or abstract in the frame, but are rather surrounded by their natural environment, by objects that describe their daily life or the action they are living at that moment. Thus, I find myself using overlapping planes or creating frames with the idea of placing the characters in their own worlds. In this sense, the environments inside the Armenian churches, made of religious wall-hanging icons, lit candles, head veils, and unique architectural elements, are ideal items to describe a nation's attachment to their religious identity.
The second aspect is related to an elementary aspect of photography, so much so as to constitute its etymology: light. In the predominantly dark environments of the Armenian churches, light often makes its entrance with truly special effects, through luminous blades that penetrate from the oblong windows or from the domes of the great cathedrals. The optical sensation recalls Caravaggesque scenes in which a divine entity manifests itself to common mortals. To the cold sunlight that so forcibly enters, is opposed the warm light of the candelabras arranged along the walls, creating a coexistence of tones that returns images with an almost surreal chromaticism. 
And above all, of course, there are the Armenians: a people that you learn to love immediately. In the moments when I felt like an intruder in their sacred rites, an noisy disturber of their religious intimacy, suddenly, with a smile, with an affectionate gesture and with the granite patience of a people that has had to suffer so much in the course of history, it was they who made me feel at ease, an accomplice in a narrative of images that I hope you may like.

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