by Julie Kim
Staff Writer
University of La Verne alumnus Veero Derkarabetian has spent roughly half his 27 years capturing life on film.
One of those moments took 11 pictures to tell a story.
“Kids in Armenia,” the photography exhibit hosted by Pomona’s Jlee Photography Centre, was shot in black and white and articulated the playtime of the children in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital and Derkarabetian’s former residence.
The playground was nothing but an asphalt enclosure made of an old, beat-down car and a soccer goal. Living conditions in 33 Tumanian St., where Derkarabetian stayed in 2000, were less than par.
“The power would go out the entire day… No heat. The water would be only on for two hours… I wanted to show the courtyard that was the kids’ entire world,” he said.
Photography professor Gary Colby, Derkarabetian’s former teacher, said he saw many positive qualities in his student. He was “very productive and an exhaustive staffer (for the Campus Times and La Verne Magazine).”
But besides having excellent technical and writing skills, “his storytelling was always extraordinary,” Colby said.
Derkarabetian illustrated that the Armenian children made do with the few items they had. One image showed a young boy reacting to a soccer game loss; others captured girls gossiping about their crushes and friends finding a hidden passage in an old home.
Derkarabetian wanted to show “what life is like somewhere else.” America has so many cultures, he said, that people feel no need to travel because of it.
Born in Lawrence, Kan., he moved to California at an early age. Derkarabetian said he used to be less than proud of his Armenian background. “I was embarrassed to eat the weird food Mom made. I used to be anti-Armenian.”
But around the same time in high school when he fell in love with photography, his attitude changed with the realization that his country had a rich and complicated history.
Armenia, which is the size of Maryland, was once prosperous and wealthy. But the Ottoman Empire eventually conquered its land, and massacred 1.5 million Armenians.
“The Turkish government still fails to recognize what they did,” Derkarabetian said.
It “went from a communist country to capitalist and there are the really rich who take advantage of the system, and the poor people who don’t know what to do,” Derkarabetian said, adding Armenia is really suffering.
At the reception for his Feb. 14 exhibit, Derkarabetian put up a big map with a box around Armenia, said Colby.
He felt it was important to understand the background of the country. In 2000 he had an opportunity to volunteer for a journalism publication with the Armenian Youth Federation. His father encouraged him to participate.
“(Veero) is sensitive to the environment and caring for the human condition,” said Aghop Der-Karabetian, Veero’s father and associate dean of Arts and Sciences and chairman of the psychology department at ULV.
“He shoots with his heart, and not his eyes,” he said.
Derkarabetian stayed in the capital city for a month, and took pictures of the neighborhood kids during his last week there.
“Kids in Armenia are the same in an African village or in an American suburb,” he said. “Kids in the world are all the same,” a notion he found reassuring.
The exhibit will be on display at Jlee Photography Centre until March 6. For more information, call (909) 620-9034.
