One in Three, 2019
I first began photographing my grandmother in early high school. She bought me my first camera and always encouraged me to pursue my interest in photojournalism. She taught me everything I know about what it means to be a strong Armenian woman, and most importantly, she taught me what it means to be jarbik (ջարբիկ) a Western Armenian word used to describe a person who knows how to endure, adapt, and move through the world with charm, grit, and dignity, even when the rules are not written for them.
In 2016, she was diagnosed with cancer for the second time in her life — lung cancer that would soon spread to her brain. I brought my camera with me each time I visited her in Los Angeles, and for the four years before her death, I watched her slowly become a new person. Although she despised the way she looked, she understood the importance of allowing me to document this moment in her life, so that I would remember how hard she fought. She let me into her most vulnerable, private, and mundane moments, and in return, she was always happy to receive a massage from her granddaughter as we watched Dancing with the Stars.