Book Presentation: Father Land with Ara Oshagan

Please Join the Bay Area Armenian National Committee and
Hamazkayin San Francisco "Nigol Aghbalian" Chapter

a presentation by Ara Oshagan of
the newly published book of photographs and essays

Father Land
by
Vahé Oshagan and Ara Oshagan

Thursday, September 15, 2010
7:30 pm
Vaspouragan Hall, 51 Commonwealth Ave., San Francisco, CA 94118
Free admission

Father Land is a poetic and personal journey through the rugged-and-history-laden landscape of Karabagh/Armenia. It is also a unique collaboration between a photographer son and his well-known, writer father. A family steeped in Armenian literature and art, Vahé and Ara Oshagan's work is the result of an intensely felt connection to their heritage and homeland.Father Land is a literary and visual contemplation of Karabagh's present-day, its history and its culture, as well as a meditation o transnational identity, land, and paternal bonds.

Vahé Oshagan has authored eight volumes of poetry, six volumes of prose fiction, short stories, plays, and literary commentaries, as well as countless scholarly articles and essays on literary and historical topics. Oshagan is the preeminent poet and man of letters of the Armenian diaspora. His career as a writer was marked by a clear break from the past and the introduction of new literary ideas and forms into the Armenian language. In 1998, the President of the Republic of Armenia awarded Oshagan the Movses Khorenatsi medal for a lifetime of service to Armenian culture and letters---the highest Armenian honor given to a living person. Vahé Oshagan passed away on June 30, 2000.

Ara Oshagan is a photographer whose work revolves around the intersecting themes of identity, community, and memory. His first collection, iwitness, joined portraits of witnesses of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 with their stories of horror, survival, and redemption. Oshagan has also photographed the Armenian diaspora of Los Angeles in a body of work entitledTraces of Identity. His other projects include Juvies, focusing on the history of youth in the California prison system, and a project about the Ethiopian community of Los Angeles. Ara Oshagan's work is in the permanent collection of the Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida; the Downey Museum of Art, California; and the Museum of Modern Art in Armenia.

Father Land will be available for purchase at the event.

For more information, please call Ester at (650) 574-4619.