I have written many words about Artsakh while working in this place over the years, but anything written for an international audience sounds irrelevant when I think of showing these images in Armenia. 
 
Working on an issue that I am part of, belonging to the collective pain, is unlike anything else I have done. It is not work at all, it is unconditional involvement. Because of how everything has ended, it also feels like a helpless act.
 
But all the stories of the people in these images are not helpless, they are deeply meaningful.
 
When Artsakh was being attacked in September 2023, and the blockade ended, two sisters went for their last walk in Stepanakert. They were teenagers, their attitude was not tragic, it was rather romantic. They smiled and photographed each other, and I think they thought about their present more than about their future. That week, they fled to Yerevan and continued studying. And whenever I met them, they always smiled. 
 
I rarely see people as hopeful as those girls, and I think it is one of the better ways to deal with our collective pain.
 
Each person in these images has a story that involves movement and tragedy. If, as a documentary photographer, I allow myself to add a wish to this document, the wish would be that each of those stories ends with the word “hope”.