Project Save, the photo archive that has preserved original photographs, the stories, identities, and histories of the Armenian diaspora celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2025, and has opened an exhibition space in Watertown where the public can view changing exhibits. A temporary exhibition is now on display at the Watertown Library.
The organization began in the 1960s when founder Ruth Tomasian was living in New York City. It was officially registered in 1975. Project Save is now run by Arto Vaun, who has made some changes.
“Ruth, our founder, she was turning 80 this year and we’re turning 50. She wanted to set things up for the next 50 years” Vaun said. “You know, what’s the plan for the next 50 years? So that’s kind of that’s when I came in.”
One of Vaun’s main goals was to spread the word about Project Save.
“There are still so many people that don’t know about Project save or there are people that have sort of heard of it, but they don’t really know that much about it,” Vaun said.
The archive did not have a public facing space until a couple years ago.
“We’re over on Pleasant, 600 Pleasant St., so we have a gallery, and, it’s a it’s a place where we can have events and welcome people, have exhibitions, lectures, things like that,” Vaun said.
Every couple months, Project Save hosts Lens and Libations.
“We pick a Thursday after work and we just have wine and some snacks, and it’s an opportunity for people to come and just mingle and check out the photos and talk,” Vaun said. “And so it’s kind of it’s both good for Project Save, but it’s another place in the community for people to come together.”
He also plans to start a series called Conversations on Photography in the space.
Project Save continues to seek out more photos for the archive. While it focuses on the Armenian experience, Vaun said Project Save welcomes a wide range of subjects and types of photos.
“Once you have an archive that’s this big and one of the only of its kind, and times continue to change, and you have to adapt. So, now we’re opening things up. We want to open it up to a lot more people who maybe felt that, OK, well, this is just an Armenian thing, where, in fact, it’s a photography thing, it’s a social history thing,” he said. “We welcome any and all photos that are in any way connected to anything Armenian. So that could be someone who is Armenian, their family is Armenian. But you know, there are people who are a quarter Armenian. There are people that were married to an Armenian.”
Vaun added that the subject of photographs may not be an Armenian, but they could be taken by a photographer who is Armenian.
“In the history of photography, Armenians have carved out a little space for themselves. There were a lot of Armenian photo studios in the in the Middle East and parts of Europe, in the United States, and, of course, in Armenia and Soviet Armenia,” Vaun said.
Some of Project Saves’ collection are on display at the Watertown Free Public Library and will run through May.
“What I decided for that is what we’re going to do is, because it’s Watertown, we’re going to do something called ‘Armenians of Watertown and Beyond,'” Vaun said. “So a lot of the photographs that will exhibit will have to do with Armenians of Watertown. But then I’m going to throw in some photographs, because it’s the 50th, so people also see the breadth of the archive.”
In conjunction with the exhibit, Vaun will be giving a presentation called “Speak Memory: The Photographic Archive as Resistance & Renewal” on April 30 at 7 p.m. as part of the Library’s Democracy Talks series.
“I’m going to be giving a talk for that related to photography and community building, immigration and kind of as a kind of something that can give us a little bit of hope and difficult times that we’re all kind of dealing with right now,” he said.
Find out more about Project Save by clicking here.
Wow! A ton of history.
In the lede photo–of my neighborhood business district–you can see the fly loft of the old Coolidge Theater. How I wish it were still there. I wonder if anyone has much of the history on it.
I know it was a movie theatre in its last years. But if it had a fly loft, it must have been a legitimate theatre at one point in its history. I wonder who and what performed there?
What an amazing treasury of images.
Ruth was my neighbor for a time over on School St when I lived there. She’s a lovely lady.