Preserving the global Armenian experience through photography
Project Save is dedicated to saving the photographic heritage of the worldwide Armenian community by making our repository of original photographs, from as early as 1860, accessible for research, publications and presentations.
Feel free to email us at archives@projectsave.org if you don’t find something on your research topic.
Dates: 1900-1920
After the Genocide, foreign missionaries worked as doctors, nurses, educators, and engineers supporting Near East Relief, a humanitarian organization founded in response to the Genocide. Missionaries served in schools, hospitals, and orphanages.
Dates: 1910-1981
The images in this collection depict events, banquets, and conventions of various organizations and churches, primarily Armenian ones. The photos are part of Digital Commonwealth, managed by the Boston Public Library, which provides public access to materials through a consortium of archives, libraries, museums, and historical societies across Massachusetts.
Dates: Ottoman Empire
Original glass plate negatives of the family photographs of Karekin Encababian, of the Encababian Frères Photography Studio. The Encababians were an Armenian family of photographers from Sivas (present-day Turkey). The negatives give insight into the family’s story, the photographic process, and the photographer’s mastery.
An audio recording of an interview with Karekin Encababian’s children (1988) has been digitized and transcribed.
Dates: 1910s to 1950s
The collection captures notable locations and events in Constantinople (now Istanbul) before the Algen family’s move to New York City in 1920. Algen photographed buildings, monuments, street scenes, rural areas outside the city, nearby islands, and more intimate photographs of his family and friends. He also photographed battleships on the Bosporus strait during the Occupation of Constantinople around 1918 or 1919 and the visit of Emperor Charles I and Empress Zita to Constantinople in 1918.
After the family’s move to New York City, he photographed his new home avidly: capturing street scenes, family events, vacations, outings, and picnics. He also documented activities in his music studio on Riverside Drive and invited musicians, friends, and family to sit for portraits. The entire collection comprises over 800 original glass plate and sheet film negatives.
The collection consists of 1361 silver gelatin photographs (744 of which are available online) from the collection of the late Jack Torosian, a collector based in New York City, originally from Smyrna. The photographs show life in Soviet Armenia from 1923 to 1973, with the bulk from 1923 to 1973.
The photographs cover many aspects of life in Armenia during the Soviet era: factory work life, construction of factory buildings, workers’ housing, education, the Young Pioneers (Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization), repatriates arriving from abroad and at work, and portraits of notable figures of the time in politics, military, and the arts and sciences.
Project Save also has an extensive collection of +700 Oral Histories from our photo donors, a selection of which have been fully transcribed and digitized.