It was great to have the opportunity to photograph the many beautiful places and historical monuments in Armenia, which I didn't have time for when I was there shooting news for Time magazine in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For example, I visited Lake Sevan, where the quality of light is really extraordinary and it can change radically within seconds. I also visited some of the churches—not just the very famous ones, but also the tiny funky churches in the middle of nowhere. I got to see church ceremonies I'd have missed doing strictly news photography.
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I was in Armenia for Life magazine just after the earthquake in 1988, and I stayed for a month in a kind of broken-down schoolhouse. It was depressing to go back 16 years later and find so many people still living in miserable makeshift housing like metal shacks and shipping containers. Something like 30,000 individuals are still without homes. (See "Boys on the Hood").
The Armenian government and other groups, including Save the Children and the Catholic church, have a lot of relief programs going on. Also many wealthy people of Armenian descent whose families were part of the diaspora are returning to help. But it's just such a monumental task. Armenia, like all the republics of the former Soviet Union, has had economic difficulties—but on top of that, Armenians had the earthquake to contend with, and then a war.
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One of the wealthiest men in Armenia has a kind of baroque mansion in a village outside Yerevan. His palace was still under construction when I saw it, but nearly finished. He has caged lions, frescoes, and a palatial bedroom for his toddler, who sleeps in a king-size bed with a statue of a lion on each side. The man has his own church, which he built to share with the villagers. Although he didn't allow any photos, I was given an extensive tour and was invited to a gigantic, normally men-only, banquet that he held in a tent in the pouring rain. I was pressed to drink a lot of vodka.
I think he didn't want anyone to take pictures because that kind of conspicuous consumption would be frowned upon in Armenia. It was extremely decadent, and most of the wealthy people I've met there are much more down to earth.
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