Fotografia di Kathryn Cook

          This is a project about the forced loss of memory - a loss unthinkable to most of us, living as we do in age of instant and costant documentation. In 1915, as Ottoman Turkey was on the brink of war, something horrible happened, the memory of which has been manipulated and left out of Turkish history books. A fiercely nationalistic young gevernment devised a plan for a great empire, a plan based on ethnicity and religion. The Armenians were in the way (and later, so were Greek, Assyrian, and Jews), and so they were disposed of by government order. An estimated 1.5 milion Armenians were violently forced to leave their homes, their possessions, the lives and the ancient homeland behind. They were marched across unforgiving terrain without food and water. Families were ripped apart; men were marched away, never to return. Rape and murder was rampant. Children were sometimes spared, given to a family and converted to Islam. The operation ended in complete devastation.
          For Turkey, this bloodshed, so much of this horror and tragedy that paved the way for the birth of the Republic in 1923, is its darkest, unspoken stain. And so the perpetrator has chosen to forget.
          Before invading Poland in 1939, Adolf Hitler asked his commanders, «Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?». My ongoing project, «Memory of Trees», is the antithesis of this reasoning. It defies imposed amnesia and amplifies the possibility of remembering.
          In January 2007 the unimaginable happened in Istanbul: Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who spoke out publicly in defense of minority rights, was murdered in front of his Armenian newspaper's office in the middle of the day. This tragedy proved that this issue was anything but past; identity based on nationalism and ethnicity thrives today. This is the idea of «Turkishness», born in the same moment as the Republic, and any act against it is treated as criminal. That includes speaking of the past. This attitude threatens Armenians - and other minorities - keeping them silent and afraid. And more, an antire century has passed since the Armenian massacres, which means there has been plenty of time for the Turkish government to change its version of history and ingrain this new narrative into society. As Czech novelist Milan Kundera said, «The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against fogetting». 
          Today, nationalism runs deep, and so does amnesia. However, there are subtle, quiet ways people are actually remembering the past. One example takes place in a small village in eastern Turkey called Agacli, which has become central to my work. In Turkish, Agacli, means «with trees» or, «place of trees», and before 1915 it was inhabited by an Armenian majority. Recently, the Kurdish residents revived a silk-weaving tradition that was inspired by those Armenians before them. They cultivate silkworms in the same way, in the same gardens, in the same Mulberry trees, used by the Armenians nearly a century ago. The trees - and now this silk tradition - are all that remain of the Armenians existence here. They symbolize the enduring legacy on their ancient homeland, hence the title for this project.
          What took place in Turkey to a group of its citizens just before the Great War has endured and echoed into the 21st century. Without a doubt, the legacy of the Armenian Genocide lives on. But, as one survivor expressed, «What i the legacy of silence?». Through my work, I am to give this silence a telling face.   

Kathryn Cook