<i>Autoportrait</i> – An Interview with Photographer and Artist Hrair Sarkissian

This interview with Syrian photographer and artist Hrair Sarkissian reflects on his keynote speech Autoportrait, a year after its delivery at the symposium Vestiges of Memory, which took place at the University for the Creative Arts in Canterbury in July 2024. In this discussion, the symposium’s convener, photographic artist and academic Sara Andersdotter, returns to points raised and questions that have arisen since Sarkissian’s presentation. Sarkissian and Andersdotter discuss recurring themes, focal points and processes in his work, a photographic and art practice that is fueled by a drive to tell significant stories of human loss, pain and suffering; those of victims, survivors, relatives, and ancestors. The interview centers on narratives that have come to shape Sarkissian’s photographic and art practice, his role as an artist, and his relationships to his collaborators and viewers. While some of these narratives pertain to his Armenian heritage and deal with the autobiographical and ancestral, others tell stories of the pain of others; those killed in conflicts, genocides and wars, those vanished through enforced disappearances under authoritarian regimes, and those left behind to live with the memories and ghosts of their loved ones. Ultimately, Sarkissian’s work aims to keep memory of loss and absence, alive and present.