For more than 16 years, Armenians have struggled to reverse a downward spiral of desolation and poverty caused by natural disaster and war. In 1988, a massive earthquake devastated the country, while war with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno Karabagh territory in 1990-1994 led to widespread destruction of its infrastructure and services. Photographer Paul Mellor has captured current conditions in the former Soviet republic with a series of images entitled "Armenia and Karabagh - The Aftermath." The exhibition documents life in Armenia and the state of medical care after the earthquake and war. It runs at Hoopers Gallery in London until March 5. Mellor took the photos in 2001 and 2002 during two trips to Armenia with his wife, Kathy, a neonatal nurse practitioner invited by Armenian NGO Family Care to assess the training needs of the paediatric staff in a maternity hospital in the city of Stepanakert. He spoke to AlertNet's Kris Hickman about the pictures on show.
In Gyumri, Armenia's second-largest city, two church spires crashed to the ground after the 1988 earthquake. The remains, now part of the urban landscape, are a popular gathering place in a country in which unemployment tops 50 percent. "The men were there because…there was no place else to go to, certainly no work to do,' Mellor said. "Rather than being at home, they were drawn to this central place. "Men are providers here, and they are no longer able to provide for their family, so this is a depressing situation for them. "The picture is sort of symbolic, a gaze into the distance without a lot to do. This is earthquake damage as opposed to war damage, but at the end of the day, it has the same result."
Shushi, eight miles from Stepanakert, was the epicentre of hostility during the Armenia-Karabagh conflict. As such, it attracted media from all over the world. Mistrust of foreign photographers remains to this day, but this woman allowed Mellor to take her picture. "She sat in the corner with food laid out in front of her," he said. "That was all the food that she had, and that was all that would comprise her meals for some time. There was no husband, no man, so this woman had no income or means of support. "The food laid out before her was it. The heater no longer worked, the electricity was unreliable, as was the water supply. Heating came from a wood-burning stove. There was another room next door that they could have lived in, but they had no belongings to put in it, so they only lived in one room." After Mellor took the photo, he heard a commotion outside. Residents of the tenement were angry that the woman had let a Western photographer take her picture. "They had been used to the media coming along, and the media came and reported and took their pictures and they left and nothing changed, so there was a bit of dissent that another Westerner had come along with his camera," Mellor said. "Words are not enough for them. They need actions and they need change."
The ruins of Aghdam, in the Armenian territory of Karabagh, form a "forbidden city." The government forbids visitors because the buildings have crumbled and landmines pepper the city. Mellor photographed Aghdam from the minaret of a church while Armenian troops camped nearby, oblivious to his presence. Mellor said the destruction in the photo was probably caused by retreating Armenian troops who didn't want insurgents in Karabagh to gain the city. But in spite of Aghdam's land mines and collapsed buildings, Armenians have begun to move back into the city. "The stonework and brickwork is there for rebuilding, and people are perhaps reclaiming the metal and scrap they can sell to make money," Mellor said. "The buildings provide little protection in themselves, but they are obviously better than what the people have been at previously."
This small, bare space looks nothing like a hospital room. The beds are rusty, the linen dirty, and the only source of heat is a wood-burning stove. Bare cables and wires snake out the door from the stove. There are no heart monitors or charts -- nothing to indicate this room's purpose in Karabagh's main children's hospital. Family Care aims to provide staff training, equipment and funding for hospitals such as this one. All blood and drugs for surgical procedures must be supplied or paid for by family and friends. Armenia lacks the resources to boost hospital staff numbers, and all improvements must come from NGOs. "You can't go in and suddenly change everything," Mellor said. "It has to be a gradual process. Everything is evident by the lack of it."
One of Family Care's goals is to see how families live when they are not receiving medical aid. In Maralik, the Mellors visited a family that had previously benefited from Family Care's services. For Mellor, it was a jarring experience. "I walked in through the door and the sight that I saw was such an emotionally powerful sight," he said. "I had no idea what was going to be on the other side of that door. She (the girl in the photo) was directly opposite me. She just sat there, and the walls were cracked and black from the smoke from the wood-burning stove. "Children of that age don't just sit there, but she'd obviously been sitting there for some time, and she took no notice of me as I walked in. She was playing with her hands."
Mellor took this photo after the rosy-cheeked little girl began to move around, and her mother and brother joined her on the bed. "Those are the same clothes the boy wears everyday,' he said. "This was January, very cold, precious little heat, and he would go outside in those clothes." Mellor said the photos gave an insight into the daily lives of Armenian families seeking medical care. "It isn't really just a case of looking at the medical side, although that is the predominant side," he said. "We have to take a look at what the mothers giving birth are going back to."
Surgical gloves in a hospital in the city of Maralik. Scant resources mean that items meant for single use are sometimes washed and used again.
A mother and her swaddled infant in a children's hospital in Karabagh.
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