Diana Markosian and Gabrielle J. Sirkin in Conversation
Artist Talk
Diana Markosian and Gabrielle J. Sirkin in Conversation
Saturday, February 22
4:00 p.m. PST
Join Aperture and Arcana: Books on the Arts for a conversation between photographer Diana Markosian and art director Gabrielle J. Sirkin. They will discuss Markosian’s most recent publication, Father (Aperture, 2024), an intimate and engrossing diaristic portrayal of estrangement and reconnection, recounted through documentary photographs, family snapshots, text, and visual ephemera.
Diana Markosian: Father presents the Armenian photographer’s journey to another place and another time, where she attempts to piece together an image of a familiar stranger—her long-lost father. The images, made over the course of a decade, take place in her father’s home in Armenia. Father follows her first monograph, Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020), in which Markosian recreates the story of her family’s journey from post–Soviet Russia to the US in the 1990s.
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Diana Markosian is among the leaders of a new generation of photographers and lens-based artists advancing documentary storytelling through image-making. In 1996, she moved to the US from Russia with her brother and mother, leaving behind her father, who would eventually relocate back to the family’s home country of Armenia. Her photographs have been published in Vanity Fair, Vogue, and the New Yorker. Her work is represented by Galerie les filles du calvaire, Paris. The artist’s acclaimed first monograph, Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020), was selected as one of the top books of the year by Time and the Museum of Modern Art Magazine. She holds an MS from Columbia University in New York.
Gabrielle J. Sirkin is a photography art director and creative producer, as well as an associate production director at Expedia Group. She has worked on projects for More magazine, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Beats by Dre, and Apple. She is a Society of Publication Designers Silver Medal and Merit award winner, an American Photography award winner, and was nominated for an Emmy.
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Image: Diana Markosian, The Stranger; from the series Father; from Diana Markosian: Father (Aperture, 2024). © 2024 Aperture
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