Armenian Photo Archive “Project Save” Makes Urgent Call to Preserve Community Histories

Massachusetts-based Project Save, the world’s largest-known archive of Armenian photographic history, marks its 50th anniversary this spring with a bold new expansion—and a renewed global call to action. Details are in this press release. 

Comprising more than 100,000 original images spanning communities across the world from the 1830s to today, the nonprofit has a new home and an invigorated mission to ensure Armenian family histories aren’t lost to time. The group is calling on Armenian families Quebec Area to consider donating their historic, cultural, and otherwise meaningful photos and ephemera to the archive.

As founder Ruth Thomasian steps back from her daily work for the group, Executive Director Arto Vaun — who was born in Boston and has lived and worked in Armenia — is leading Project Save into a new era. Vaun plans to grow the organization’s collection, expand its public programming, and position it as a model for preserving the histories of immigrant and displaced communities.

In this milestone year—and in advance of April’s Armenian History Month in the U.S.—it’s a great time to tell the story of this global cultural organization and its mission to preserve a cultural history. Would you like to know more about Project Save, talk with Arto Vaun and discuss the group’s expansion? The archive has extraordinary photographs from around the country and around the world.

— John Michael Kennedy for Project Save–

Project Save

Founded in 1975 in New York City, Project Save Photograph Archives is the oldest institution solely focused on preserving and sharing the photography of the Armenian global experience. With over 80,000 hardcopy photographs in our collections, we bring to light the culture and history of Armenians worldwide through the stories that images tell.

Project Save is a living archive and open to all. Through various initiatives, outreach, and collaboration with organizations throughout the world, our mission is to highlight the dynamism, variety, and universal quality of the Armenian experience. In doing so, we not only preserve it, we humanize it, showing that the past is still alive in the present, and that it can illuminate the future.