Leah Bedrosian Peterson

My work addresses how identity, culture and desire overlap in our daily lives. 


Brave Little Hawk (2022-current)
Narrative short film https://www.instagram.com/leahbedrosianfilms/
I’m currently in post-production on my narrative short film, Brave Little Hawk, which I wrote and directed. Brave Little Hawk is about underlying tensions in a dysfunctional family that erupt and cause a grandmother with undiagnosed dementia to wander away from home. A family friend unwittingly becomes her savior. The film is ultimately about family bonds and the themes of single parenthood, elderly dementia, teen angst, and relationship dynamics as they relate to multi-generational family units. 

Under the Walnut Tree (2018) 
Stop motion animation https://vimeo.com/232123569
A young boy has been displaced during the massacre of his people and his family. After wandering alone for days, he is ready to give up but fights to continue to safety. His struggle for survival ends when he finds his mother singing to a lifeless body. Under The Walnut Tree is loosely based on the true story of Shahan Natalie, who survived the Hamidian Massacres (also known as the Armenian Massacres) which were the precursor to the Armenian Genocide.

The Past is Present (2015) 
Video, photo, animation www.leahbedrosian.com
The Past Is Present is comprised of video, photography, and animation that explore the history of the Armenian Genocide and its implications on the current generation of young Armenians. When cultural identity is synonymous with survival and genocide, one cannot distinguish between the origins of one’s own culture and the origins of a fractured identity. Loss of past, loss of generational influence, and loss of culture are all a part of the survivors’ experience, and, therefore, become an inherited experience. The photographs in The Past Is Present address the legacy of victimization and symbols that reference the poetics of survival and cultural identity. Each image represents an element within the stories that were passed down by my family related to their experiences during the Armenian Genocide or they are items that hold cultural value and directly impact they hybridity of my identity. Stories related to the genocide were revealed after I initiated the discussion of the past at a Christmas gathering in 1993. Prior to 1993, little to no conversation was had about the circumstances that my ancestors had to deal with. Genocide is not a topic that is favorable with many survivors in my family - it is preferable to speak in sweeping generalities rather than recount the specifics of horrors witnessed or experienced.

In The Location of Culture, Homi Bhaba eloquently states, “The borderline work of culture demands an encounter with ‘newness’ that is not part of the continuum of past and present. It creates a sense of the new as an insurgent act of cultural translation. Such art does not merely recall the past as social cause of aesthetic precedent; it renews the past, refiguring it as a contingent ‘in-between’ space, that innovates and interrupts the performance of the present. The ‘past-present’ becomes part of the necessity, not the nostalgia, of living” (Bhaba 10).

 

Inchbes es (2013) 
3-channel video installation, loop http://vimeo.com/79569649
Inchbes es (translates to “how are you?”) is a 3-channel video installation. The legacy that the Armenian Genocide has left for the current generation of Armenian-Americans is one where our culture and history are at the core of our identity. I have created two cinemagraphs and one standard video that are intended to represent my identity as an Armenian American. On the left, there is a cinemagraph of a pomegranate being pounded to expel the seeds. The pomegranate is included in many Armenian recipes and is the quintessential Middle Eastern fruit. The repetitious pounding and the splattering of the blood red seeds reference the violence that I know happened to my family and countless others during the Armenian Massacres.

The cinemagraph of the coffee being poured could either be Turkish or Armenian coffee (they are virtually identical). This never-ending pour is intended to reference the never-ending flood of questions that I have about why the massacres occurred and the experiences that my family members endured.

Of all the Armenian phrases I learned growing up (and after two years of Armenian school), there is only one phrase that I can remember- “Inchbes es?” which means, “How are you?”. I am always concerned with whether I am pronouncing it correctly or if I sound like the least ethnic Armenian on the planet.

 

May I Go Blind (2012) 
2D animation http://vimeo.com/83000475

May I Go Blind is based off of the trial of Soghomon Tehlirian who murdered the former Turkish Grand Vizir, Talaat Pasha on March 15, 1921. Tehlirian, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide and subsequent member of a group of Armenian assassins called “Operation Nemesis”, held Taalat Pasha responsible for the deaths of his family because it was the Grand Vizir who decreed that all Armenians should be relocated and disposed of. In broad daylight and in front of many witnesses in Berlin, Tehlirian walked up to Taalat Pasha on a busy street and shot and killed him. Tehlirian was tried for murder, but was eventually acquitted by the German court (ironically this was the same year that Hitler became the leader of the Nazi Party and only 18 years before the genocide of the Jewish population during WWII).

The title, May I Go Blind, is a quote from the first day of trial when Tehlirian said that after being ordered to leave their home and put in a caravan of people, that they were attacked and robbed by Turkish soldiers and the Turkish population of Erzinga. His entire family was killed in front of him and at one point, his mother cried out “May I go blind”, when the Turkish gendarmes grabbed his sister intending to rape and kill her (which they did).

This animation attempts to illustrate specific moments that Tehlirian addressed in his testimony related to his personal experience as well as the overwhelmingly emotional nature associated with the experience of genocide, survival, revenge, and heroism. 

 

Erasure (2010-current)
Photography and Video  http://vimeo.com/34046763http://vimeo.com/21551269

The project, Erasure, is comprised of photographs and videos that were taken during my travels to South East Asia. I documented villages and cities of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam over a two-month period. The title, Erasure, references the changes in the local traditional culture and the changes to the landscape that are occurring as these third-world nations are being influenced by Western culture. It's the remnant of the traditional culture, architecture, and history that I'm intrigued by and chose to document for this project.

   

Yeah, I Noticed You (2009) 
Photography and Video http://vimeo.com/21556308

Yeah, I Noticed You is a series of images and videos taken with a portable surveillance camera that I carried with me over the course of a few months. The project is a reference to www.Craigslist.org /Missed Connections where people post the details of missed encounters with strangers or past loves. Through the use of surveillance I’ve decided to document the various missed encounters that I’ve witnessed or experienced myself. The installation of the work is intended to have footage from the project played on a surveillance monitor and stills from the videos both in sequence an as individual images are printed out as large photographs.

 

Armenian Online Dating (2004-2006) 
Photography and website www.leahbedrosian.com

The project, Armenian Online Dating, is two-part. The first part, Armeniandate.net (no longer functioning) was a fictitious yet functioning dating website of characters loosely based on actual profiles that I found online. The profiles on the site are intended to raise questions about why it is important to some people that they date primarily within one ethnic group and also to investigate the politics of ethnic communities. The site addresses the concerns of a cultural heritage and how individuals may choose to embrace or ignore characteristics that link them to that culture. The second part of the project (shot on a 4x5 Field camera) are large-scale images of the characters on the website and are photographed in situations and environments that I imagined them in after creating their profiles. These photographs are about confronting one's imagination and recognizing the potential realities of personalities and lifestyles. The scenarios that these characters are in range from someone reading a book in Armenian while eating Mini Wheats, to a rebel warrior outfitted in the outskirts of a city, to a man who claims to be a wine connoisseur, yet he drinks from a jug of wine. If you have ever looked at online dating websites, you may have recognized that there is a gap between the imagined and the real. This gap allows for both humor and the serious examination of ethnic politics to exist simultaneously.

 

My Life As Fiction (2004-2006) 
Video http://vimeo.com/21552191

My family role-plays and engages in a conversation about how they would interact with me if they found out that my mother hid the secret that I was not only adopted, but of Turkish decent.

 

The Turkish Coffee Maker (2004-2006) 
Video http://vimeo.com/21552172

In this video I go through the process of making Turkish Coffee while telling you the story of my first friendship with a Turkish girl and it’s effect on my Armenian family.

 

 

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CV

03/01/2023

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Project Statements

03/01/2023

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Project Statements

Leah Bedrosian Peterson

My work addresses how identity, culture and desire overlap in our daily lives. 


Brave Little Hawk (2022-current)
Narrative short film https://www.instagram.com/leahbedrosianfilms/
I’m currently in post-production on my narrative short film, Brave Little Hawk, which I wrote and directed. Brave Little Hawk is about underlying tensions in a dysfunctional family that erupt and cause a grandmother with undiagnosed dementia to wander away from home. A family friend unwittingly becomes her savior. The film is ultimately about family bonds and the themes of single parenthood, elderly dementia, teen angst, and relationship dynamics as they relate to multi-generational family units. 

Under the Walnut Tree (2018) 
Stop motion animation https://vimeo.com/232123569
A young boy has been displaced during the massacre of his people and his family. After wandering alone for days, he is ready to give up but fights to continue to safety. His struggle for survival ends when he finds his mother singing to a lifeless body. Under The Walnut Tree is loosely based on the true story of Shahan Natalie, who survived the Hamidian Massacres (also known as the Armenian Massacres) which were the precursor to the Armenian Genocide.

The Past is Present (2015) 
Video, photo, animation www.leahbedrosian.com
The Past Is Present is comprised of video, photography, and animation that explore the history of the Armenian Genocide and its implications on the current generation of young Armenians. When cultural identity is synonymous with survival and genocide, one cannot distinguish between the origins of one’s own culture and the origins of a fractured identity. Loss of past, loss of generational influence, and loss of culture are all a part of the survivors’ experience, and, therefore, become an inherited experience. The photographs in The Past Is Present address the legacy of victimization and symbols that reference the poetics of survival and cultural identity. Each image represents an element within the stories that were passed down by my family related to their experiences during the Armenian Genocide or they are items that hold cultural value and directly impact they hybridity of my identity. Stories related to the genocide were revealed after I initiated the discussion of the past at a Christmas gathering in 1993. Prior to 1993, little to no conversation was had about the circumstances that my ancestors had to deal with. Genocide is not a topic that is favorable with many survivors in my family - it is preferable to speak in sweeping generalities rather than recount the specifics of horrors witnessed or experienced.

In The Location of Culture, Homi Bhaba eloquently states, “The borderline work of culture demands an encounter with ‘newness’ that is not part of the continuum of past and present. It creates a sense of the new as an insurgent act of cultural translation. Such art does not merely recall the past as social cause of aesthetic precedent; it renews the past, refiguring it as a contingent ‘in-between’ space, that innovates and interrupts the performance of the present. The ‘past-present’ becomes part of the necessity, not the nostalgia, of living” (Bhaba 10).

 

Inchbes es (2013) 
3-channel video installation, loop http://vimeo.com/79569649
Inchbes es (translates to “how are you?”) is a 3-channel video installation. The legacy that the Armenian Genocide has left for the current generation of Armenian-Americans is one where our culture and history are at the core of our identity. I have created two cinemagraphs and one standard video that are intended to represent my identity as an Armenian American. On the left, there is a cinemagraph of a pomegranate being pounded to expel the seeds. The pomegranate is included in many Armenian recipes and is the quintessential Middle Eastern fruit. The repetitious pounding and the splattering of the blood red seeds reference the violence that I know happened to my family and countless others during the Armenian Massacres.

The cinemagraph of the coffee being poured could either be Turkish or Armenian coffee (they are virtually identical). This never-ending pour is intended to reference the never-ending flood of questions that I have about why the massacres occurred and the experiences that my family members endured.

Of all the Armenian phrases I learned growing up (and after two years of Armenian school), there is only one phrase that I can remember- “Inchbes es?” which means, “How are you?”. I am always concerned with whether I am pronouncing it correctly or if I sound like the least ethnic Armenian on the planet.

 

May I Go Blind (2012) 
2D animation http://vimeo.com/83000475

May I Go Blind is based off of the trial of Soghomon Tehlirian who murdered the former Turkish Grand Vizir, Talaat Pasha on March 15, 1921. Tehlirian, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide and subsequent member of a group of Armenian assassins called “Operation Nemesis”, held Taalat Pasha responsible for the deaths of his family because it was the Grand Vizir who decreed that all Armenians should be relocated and disposed of. In broad daylight and in front of many witnesses in Berlin, Tehlirian walked up to Taalat Pasha on a busy street and shot and killed him. Tehlirian was tried for murder, but was eventually acquitted by the German court (ironically this was the same year that Hitler became the leader of the Nazi Party and only 18 years before the genocide of the Jewish population during WWII).

The title, May I Go Blind, is a quote from the first day of trial when Tehlirian said that after being ordered to leave their home and put in a caravan of people, that they were attacked and robbed by Turkish soldiers and the Turkish population of Erzinga. His entire family was killed in front of him and at one point, his mother cried out “May I go blind”, when the Turkish gendarmes grabbed his sister intending to rape and kill her (which they did).

This animation attempts to illustrate specific moments that Tehlirian addressed in his testimony related to his personal experience as well as the overwhelmingly emotional nature associated with the experience of genocide, survival, revenge, and heroism. 

 

Erasure (2010-current)
Photography and Video  http://vimeo.com/34046763http://vimeo.com/21551269

The project, Erasure, is comprised of photographs and videos that were taken during my travels to South East Asia. I documented villages and cities of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam over a two-month period. The title, Erasure, references the changes in the local traditional culture and the changes to the landscape that are occurring as these third-world nations are being influenced by Western culture. It's the remnant of the traditional culture, architecture, and history that I'm intrigued by and chose to document for this project.

   

Yeah, I Noticed You (2009) 
Photography and Video http://vimeo.com/21556308

Yeah, I Noticed You is a series of images and videos taken with a portable surveillance camera that I carried with me over the course of a few months. The project is a reference to www.Craigslist.org /Missed Connections where people post the details of missed encounters with strangers or past loves. Through the use of surveillance I’ve decided to document the various missed encounters that I’ve witnessed or experienced myself. The installation of the work is intended to have footage from the project played on a surveillance monitor and stills from the videos both in sequence an as individual images are printed out as large photographs.

 

Armenian Online Dating (2004-2006) 
Photography and website www.leahbedrosian.com

The project, Armenian Online Dating, is two-part. The first part, Armeniandate.net (no longer functioning) was a fictitious yet functioning dating website of characters loosely based on actual profiles that I found online. The profiles on the site are intended to raise questions about why it is important to some people that they date primarily within one ethnic group and also to investigate the politics of ethnic communities. The site addresses the concerns of a cultural heritage and how individuals may choose to embrace or ignore characteristics that link them to that culture. The second part of the project (shot on a 4x5 Field camera) are large-scale images of the characters on the website and are photographed in situations and environments that I imagined them in after creating their profiles. These photographs are about confronting one's imagination and recognizing the potential realities of personalities and lifestyles. The scenarios that these characters are in range from someone reading a book in Armenian while eating Mini Wheats, to a rebel warrior outfitted in the outskirts of a city, to a man who claims to be a wine connoisseur, yet he drinks from a jug of wine. If you have ever looked at online dating websites, you may have recognized that there is a gap between the imagined and the real. This gap allows for both humor and the serious examination of ethnic politics to exist simultaneously.

 

My Life As Fiction (2004-2006) 
Video http://vimeo.com/21552191

My family role-plays and engages in a conversation about how they would interact with me if they found out that my mother hid the secret that I was not only adopted, but of Turkish decent.

 

The Turkish Coffee Maker (2004-2006) 
Video http://vimeo.com/21552172

In this video I go through the process of making Turkish Coffee while telling you the story of my first friendship with a Turkish girl and it’s effect on my Armenian family.

 

 

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