Red Black White

“Red Black White” is a part of an ongoing project about women living with HIV in Armenia.

Due to poor socioeconomic conditions, many Armenian men spent a large part of the year working abroad, primarily in Russia. Due to circumstances such as lack of knowledge and the vulnerability of migrants, those men acquire STDs or HIV, which they transfer to their wives. Sadly, their wives discover they’re infected when they become pregnant and get tested. In most cases women are just ordinary women, wives and mothers from very traditional Armenian families and simply the victims of shame.

According to the information provided by the “National Center for Infectious Diseases” CJSC, as of March 2021, 4217 cases of HIV infection were registered in Armenia, 30,6% of which (1292 cases) are females. Heterosexual transmission is the major route of disease spread, and 93,7% of women living with HIV acquired the infection from their husbands. The majority of cases (350) were registered among women aged 20-29.

The project is multilayered and it’s not only about HIV. The subject is very sensitive and vulnerable. I feel huge responsibility from my side to not harm women who live with HIV as they don’t want to be identified. During these years I tried to find the most secure and safe way of storytelling, where they can talk and be photographed. As documenting their daily life in their homes could reveal their identity I found safest photographic approach: working in the studio with old medium format film camera.

During my researches I wanted to understand the reasons under the subject which are simply connected with the shame, Armenian traditions, education, society, gender issues. That’s why besides the portraits of women I also photographed details and stills that are connected, or reflecting intimacy of traditions, gender issues and etc.

I‘ve also built very good relationship with the Armenian organization “Real People, Real World”. From the beginning of my project they helped me in my researches and connected with many women that are now ready to be part of the project.

The submitted photographs feature four women with stories that share their personal experiences.

The project is ongoing. I plan to continue and finalize it, interview and photograph more women, to have a complete body of work.

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{A} It doesn’t matter that only I have a status in our family, this stigma can spread on everyone, they throw that black veil on everyone.

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{M} I got engaged when I turned 18. After the engagement, we learnt that my husband had used drugs in Russia and had been in prison for about four years. He said he was like that and that he has changed now. He told my father he won’t do anything, and that it was my family’s decision whether to let us marry or not. My stepmother was around, she said she won’t meddle. She told me that if I agree, they’ll take me to their house that day and put a ring on my finger. After that it will be too late to break off the engagement.

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{A} It’s hard to say if I liked him in the beginning or not. Probably not. I’m such a strange person. When I came home after the wedding, I said, oh my god, now there will be a process and I don’t know how it will happen, and I don’t want it. I didn’t realize that I got married and that was it. Now I’m a woman.

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{L} Before getting married, there was a clear limit for me: I’ll never marry a man who came from Russia, why? Because he can have a child abroad, secondly, he can have an infection, etc., thirdly, he can use drugs. It’s not that I didn’t know, I knew all that very well… but that moment came… and at that moment, knowing all that, instead of saying let’s get a health checkup, I kind of couldn’t imagine it when I saw my husband.

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{A} I didn’t marry out of love. When I was a student, I studied for a year and they decided to take a gap year because my parents didn’t want me to live alone for rent or to live in Yerevan for rent with someone at all. They said they would come, arrange something remotely, move my study just because I had nowhere to live. And I loved what I was studying. When someone appeared who lived in Yerevan, it was convenient for me. Education was important to me. I thought so without realizing. I know it’s a very strange decision, and I only knew him for a month, but I saw him for two days, and we also talked on the phone… The third time we saw each other, we got engaged. When we met for the fifth or the sixth time, it was already our wedding.

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{L} In fact, we complicate everything a lot, it also comes from our national mentality. We love to live the lives of others. For example, if one of my neighbors found out we have HIV, oh, that would be the end of the world. It’s because people always like to get into someone else’s personal life, they like to look for guilt – are you guilty or not, have you done something and get infected, or are you just a victim?...

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{L} We went to Russia. Everything was perfect, like a miracle. Suddenly my inner feeling says that it doesn’t go like this, it can’t happen that everything is so perfect. So much care, love, warmth…

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{L} We went to the Center. It gave me a shock – where have we come, why am I here? I was in that state for ten or fifteen days, as if I didn’t feel what was happening, I also didn’t believe it. I was crying, I was very discouraged. The doctor who diagnosed me gave me a paper to sign to confirm that I wouldn’t infect anyone intentionally… It could have been postponed for a while, instead of immediately giving me that paper. I went out, and I was mourning in the corridor… Oh, who I was dealing with! That inner stigma was terrible. It would be better just to die…

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{L} At that moment you don’t think to accuse your husband for having infected you, at that moment you think what the others would say if they learn about it. I had that stigma, that inner stigma, it literally kills you.

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{M} They said I had to go to the Avan district, “Acharyan 2” street, and get tested in the Center… I remember climbing the stairs crying, pregnant, dragging myself upstairs. To be honest, I don’t remember at all how the doctor approached us, I don’t remember because of the stress. We came home, and my husband started hitting his head against the wall. I call upon God, if only the baby didn’t get infected! The doctor gives hope saying there are cases when the children don’t get infected. I had breastfed the baby for quite a long time, a year and six months, how could he not get infected? He was infected, too.

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{N} It has stages, you can commit so many violations that the medicine won’t have an effect anymore, but they say the only good thing is that you just have to take your medicine on time, eat normally and you will live… No one will know, it won’t be seen on your face, it won’t be expressed anyway that you have this disease.

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{M} I was about four months pregnant, he hit me for the first time then, he was very drunk. After that he started drinking heavily, he was beating me badly, we didn’t sleep all night, he didn’t let me sleep when he was drunk. And he didn’t remember at all what had happened, what he had done. Then, in the morning, when I told him he had hit me, he said there was no such a thing, he said I was slandering him, and that if I was interested in someone else, I could leave him.

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{A} The others are the shame, not me. If you think about yourself alone, there is no shame. It’s a cultural thing. In my case, I think… I wouldn’t believe myself, this is the situation when you can’t work with yourself, they usually say that one should work with himself. Probably, someone must help me get out.

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{N} He took me to their house. They started to drink intentionally, he started it, so that no one would take me home, so that no one remained sober. I hadn’t been to their house before. If I got out of there, I would break off the engagement, but I didn’t get out of there. I had to sleep with his relative’s daughter. Well, they prepared the bed and she told me to lie down saying that she would come soon. I took off my clothes, put on the pajamas and hid my head under the blanket to get warm. I felt someone enter the room, but I didn’t raise my head to see who it was.

© Nazik Armenakian - Image from the Red Black White photography project
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{L} If we were to compare a man and an elephant, a man feels powerless in front of an elephant, for him HIV is that elephant that has covered his sun, it doesn’t let the sun come to him, it can trample him every second, he depends on him… When the first stage was over, I saw the elephant and began to examine its leg, then its tail, then its head, then the picture became complete, it started to shrink. I already understood what I was dealing with. I realized that the myths the TV, the Internet or that booklets, posters with scary images fed me with… I realized that in reality all that is a myth, there is no such scary picture that maybe used to be thirty years ago when there was no medicine. When that elephant started to get smaller and smaller I could control it as I wanted.

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