We are our Mountains

WE ARE OUR MOUNTAINS is a living archive of Armenian memory and the life's work of Armineh Johannes, documenting Armenia, Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian people.

Through this work, she recounts more than thirty years in the life of a people confronted with war, exile and pogroms, a people that others have tried to break but who remain standing – dignified, proud and unshakeable, like the mountains that surround them.

From the start of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 1989 to the offensive by Azerbaijani forces in 2023, the photographer bears witness to the most profound moments in the existence of the Armenian people.

ARMINEH JOHANNES is a documentary photographer born in Tehran to Armenian parents, who has lived in France since 1980. Since 1989, she has regularly returned to the land of her ancestors, Armenia and Karabakh, to document the daily life of a people through war, faith, exile and reconstruction.

She is one of the few photographers to have been present in the villages of Artsakh during the first armed offensives in 1989. Since then, she has continued her fieldwork uninterrupted, always working closely with the Armenian people. Her work has been published in the international press (Le Monde, The Washington Post, Libération, The Los Angeles Times, L'Express, etc.).

Preface by Tigrane Yegavian – professor at Schiller University, Caucasus specialist, journalist and researcher.