{"id":7372,"date":"2021-02-09T14:12:44","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T19:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/focus-on-diana-markosian\/"},"modified":"2023-01-13T16:26:40","modified_gmt":"2023-01-13T21:26:40","slug":"focus-on-diana-markosian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/focus_on\/focus-on-diana-markosian\/","title":{"rendered":"Diana Markosian"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_55765\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-55765\" style=\"width: 3205px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-55765 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mark_050_markosian_sb-hl_001-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"3205\" height=\"2137\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 3205px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 3205\/2137;\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-55765\" src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mark_050_markosian_sb-hl_001-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"3205\" height=\"2137\"><\/noscript><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-55765\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u00a9Diana Markosian, <em>The Arrival<\/em>, 2019, from <em>Santa Barbara<\/em> (Aperture, 2020). Courtesy the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Once upon a time, the United States billed itself as a beacon of hope, a land of opportunity and prosperity. Debatable, even prior to the last four years, that idea&nbsp;has nevertheless drawn people from around the world in search of a better life. Diana Markosian\u2019s mother was one of those people, bringing her two children from Moscow to California when Diana was seven years old, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. That decision, and its consequences, is the subject of Markosian\u2019s remarkable book, <em>Santa Barbara<\/em> (Aperture, 2020).<\/p>\n<p>The photographs in the series (scheduled to&nbsp;go on view at SFMOMA in June and at ICP in the fall) comprise a staged re-enactment of her childhood, with actors playing her mother, her father, her step-father, her brother, and Markosian herself. The images in the book are interspersed with the pages of a script, modeled after the soap opera <em>Santa Barbara<\/em>, which was enormously popular in the Soviet Union in the 1990s. In this case, though, the script outlines Markosian\u2019s dramatic exodus from Russia with her mother and brother and sets the stage for her atmospheric images. The idea of the United States conjured in <em>Santa Barbara<\/em> \u2013 a land of sun and sand and beautiful, wealthy people \u2013 was what brought her mother to Southern California. &nbsp;\u201cThe show was what we understood America to be,\u201d says Marakosian, who builds her photographic narrative around the instability of the stories we tell ourselves and the fickle nature of memory.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_55766\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-55766\" style=\"width: 2361px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-55766 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mark_013_949a9728.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2361\" height=\"1574\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 2361px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 2361\/1574;\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-55766\" src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mark_013_949a9728.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2361\" height=\"1574\"><\/noscript><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-55766\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u00a9Diana Markosian, <em>Moscow Breadline<\/em>, 2019. From <em>Santa Barbara<\/em> (Aperture, 2020). Courtesy the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The fall of the Soviet Union left Markosian\u2019s parents unemployed and strained their marriage. Her father, an engineer, wound up sewing and selling black market Barbie clothes. Her struggling mother, Svetlana, an economist, made the desperate choice to search for a new life&nbsp;in an international matchmaking catalogue, leaving Moscow for Santa Barbara and for Eli, who turned out to be a much older man than she was expecting. But they married, and for a time, made a life in this land of plenty, alluded to in a close-up shot of a shopping cart filled to the brim with Wonder bread, mayonnaise, potato chips, Lucky Charms, a dozen kinds of peanut butter on the shelf; and in images of an IHop meal, blue skies, motel pools, and theme parks. But the book also includes photographs of Eli\u2019s aging body, fog-shrouded streets, and shots of her young mother, isolated and lonely. \u201cThere was this feeling that only in America will we be happy,\u201d says Markosian. \u201cAnd then you come to America and it has its own problems and drama and its doesn&#8217;t quite match up to what is in our minds.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_55767\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-55767\" style=\"width: 3360px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-55767 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mark_036_949a5787-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"3360\" height=\"2240\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 3360px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 3360\/2240;\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-55767\" src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mark_036_949a5787-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"3360\" height=\"2240\"><\/noscript><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-55767\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u00a9Diana Markosian, <em>The Disappointment<\/em>, 2019. From <em>Santa Barbara<\/em> (Aperture, 2020). Courtesy the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Markosian studied journalism at Columbia University, but was drawn to pictures more than words. As a photojournalist, she has spent nearly a decade photographing in places like Chechnya, Armenia, Havana, and Russia, often working on stories that focus on women and girls, for the <em>New York Times<\/em>, <em>National Geographic<\/em>, and the <em>New Yorker<\/em>, among other publications. In 2016, she was invited to join the esteemed photographers\u2019 cooperative Magnum, but resigned when she was asked to submit a project other than <em>Santa Barbara<\/em> to advance her membership. \u201c<em>Santa Barbara<\/em> has been the most special, and the most truthful, project I\u2019ve worked on,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTruthful\u201d may seem a counterintuitive way to describe a project constructed with&nbsp;such obvious artifice. But Markosian\u2019s project not only dramatizes her own already dramatic childhood, but also suggests the ways in which all families are, to some degree, a fiction built on faulty memories, domestic dramas in which roles are performed. A grid of head shots of the actors who auditioned for the role of Eli echoes a reprinted page from Cherry Blossoms Magazine (\u201cbringing couples together from around the world since 1974\u201d) showing head shots of women seeking husbands. Staged photographic reconstructions (full-page color photographs as well as staged Polaroids) alternate with blurry shots of a television set showing <em>Santa Barbara<\/em>, a yellowed <em>TV Guide<\/em> page about the cancellation of the show, and old family photographs. It\u2019s a multivalent project that begins with what <em>Bookforum<\/em> called \u201cthe oceanic proportions of a single decision\u201d and zooms out to consider the storytelling&nbsp;power of images and the many ways of visualizing&nbsp;the truth.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_55770\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-55770\" style=\"width: 2361px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-55770 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mark_051_markosian-cortona-006.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2361\" height=\"1574\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 2361px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 2361\/1574;\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-55770\" src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mark_051_markosian-cortona-006.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2361\" height=\"1574\"><\/noscript><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-55770\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u00a9Diana Markosian, <em>First Meal in America<\/em>, 2019. From <em>Santa Barbara<\/em> (Aperture, 2020). Courtesy the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_55769\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-55769\" style=\"width: 659px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-55769 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mark_067_949a5583.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"659\" height=\"989\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 659px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 659\/989;\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-55769\" src=\"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/mark_067_949a5583.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"659\" height=\"989\"><\/noscript><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-55769\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u00a9Diana Markosian, <em>The Pink Robe<\/em>, 2019. From<em> Santa Barbara<\/em> (Aperture, 2020). Courtesy the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once upon a time, the United States billed itself as a beacon of hope, a land of opportunity and prosperity. Debatable, even prior to the last four years, that idea has nevertheless drawn people from around the world in search of a better life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"7374,14915,6903,6770,21722,6968,7216,5961,6833,7301,22960,6383","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[5109,5139],"issues":[70],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7372"},{"taxonomy":"issues","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photographmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issues?post=7372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}