The Armenian Museum of Fresno’s communications manager, Suzanne Crosina-Sahm, recently sat down with Tellalian to talk about Humanity During War, his deeply personal photographic exhibition opening Wednesday, Sept. 2, at the Armenian Museum of Fresno.

A third-generation Armenian-American and descendant of Armenian Genocide survivors, Tellalian traveled to Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) during the 44-day war in 2020, taking his camera into a region under relentless attack. Rather than focusing primarily on the battlefield, he turned his lens toward the civilians living beneath the shelling—families sheltering in basements, children who remained after others had fled, a young couple determined to marry in a cathedral that had been struck by artillery, and displaced women crushing grapes to make wine they hoped they would someday live to drink.

Together, the photographs tell a story not only of war, but of the remarkable resilience of people who continued to extend hospitality, celebrate love, practice their faith and plan for a future even as the world they knew was being destroyed around them.

The conflict began on Sept. 27, 2020, when large-scale fighting erupted between Azerbaijan and Armenian forces in and around Artsakh, a predominantly ethnic-Armenian region also known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan received extensive military support from Turkey, and international reporting documented the presence of Syrian fighters recruited to fight on Azerbaijan’s side. Over the next 44 days, civilians endured intense bombardment, including attacks on populated areas.

The fighting ended in November 2020 with a Russia-brokered ceasefire agreement among Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia. Under its terms, Azerbaijan retained territory it had captured during the war, while Armenia agreed to return additional surrounding territories to Azerbaijani control. Russian peacekeepers were deployed to the region, and tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians were displaced.

The story, however, did not end with the ceasefire. In September 2023, after months of blockade and shortages and a new Azerbaijani military offensive, virtually the entire ethnic-Armenian population of Artsakh—more than 100,000 people—fled to Armenia. The people Tellalian photographed can no longer return to the homeland depicted in his images.

That reality gives Humanity During War an even greater poignancy today. What Tellalian captured in 2020 has become not only a record of civilians enduring war, but a visual record of a community and a way of life that has since been uprooted.

Yet the photographs are not solely about loss. Again and again, Tellalian’s camera found something that survived the shelling: humanity, resilience and hope.

In the following conversation, Tellalian shares the stories behind some of those photographs, what compelled him to travel into a war zone, and what he hopes people will understand about the human experience of war after seeing Humanity During War.

Holy Saviour Catedral, Shushi, Artsakh, during 44-day war on Artsakh, 2020, Photo by Ezras Tellalian

SCS: Thank you for taking the time to meet with us today. Let’s start with you telling me about your photography exhibition.

Ezras Tellalian: The project was born out of a trip that I took during the war in 2020 to Artsakh. I participated in services and protests in Los Angeles, but because of the dearth of coverage of the actual civilian lives underneath the shelling, the drones, the rockets and missiles, I decided to take my serious hobby in photography—and it turned into a sort of vocation—to go and show what the experience of normal human beings was under the shelling.

SCS: What compelled you to travel there during the war?

Ezras Tellalian: Most of what we saw was—forgive the term—war porn. We saw explosions, soldiers being killed, destruction of property, buildings and so on. What we weren’t seeing was what was going on underneath the surface of war.

Those who are familiar know that there’s a sort of life that tries to go on, and that wasn’t portrayed. My goal was to go and show that side of the war through the lens of my camera.

SCS: Of all the people you photographed, is there one person or moment that stayed with you?

Ezras Tellalian: I think there were two.

The wedding in Shushi was very touching. The soldier got two days off from the front. He came back the night before the wedding to prepare, he was there the night of the wedding, then the day after the wedding he was back at the front under nearly constant shelling.

He was in Martuni, which was a hot spot throughout the war. For them to decide to continue to get married, even though the cathedral had been shelled twice in one day—it was sort of a double tap. The second time was intentional, to target civilians, journalists and first responders who would return to photograph the destruction of the church.

To get married in that cathedral was a brazen act of hope that this soldier would come back from the front afterward, but also hope that, in the midst of it, we would be protected through the service.

Services weren’t being held up there. If anything, they were being held underneath the churches, where it was safe. But we risked it. For me, that was an amazing light of hope through the darkness of the war.

Holy Saviour Catedral, Shushi, Artsakh, 2020, Photo by Ezras Tellalian

SCS: Do you know if he made it back?

Ezras Tellalian: He did, thank God. They have a young daughter.

SCS: That’s wonderful. There is a photograph of the wedding in your exhibition, correct?

Ezras Tellalian: There are a few.

SCS: What do you want people to understand about war and what war is like for ordinary people?

Ezras Tellalian: I think for us—and I’ll speak for myself—born and raised in the United States, in the San Joaquin Valley, I don’t understand war. I didn’t understand war.

Those who are from other places, from war-torn countries, understand. Most of our soldiers go and serve. They fight over there, and they come back. Even if they’ve seen combat, it’s over there. Civilians here generally don’t see war.

When was the last time we fought on our soil? The Pearl Harbor attack comes to mind. I’m also struck by Fort McHenry in Baltimore, when we were repelling the British attacks and the city was under siege. The city was under attack.

Those are the times that come to mind for an American when we were really struggling under fire ourselves.

What I’d like people to come away with is a sense that, in most other places in the world, when we talk about war, we’re not just talking about soldiers on a battlefield who then go home. We’re talking about the battlefield being in people’s homes.

Opening Night Reception
Wednesday October 2, 2026,
4pm to 6pm

SCS: You’ve said that amid the displacement and destruction, you witnessed people holding on to life, peace and love. What did that look like? You’ve touched on that a little bit, but perhaps you can explain more.

Ezras Tellalian: We were in a basement with some of the last children—if not the last children—in Stepanakert, the capital, at that point in the war. Everybody else had fled if they could, especially women and children.

Those who stayed behind were usually there to welcome soldiers back for a night or two, as I talked about. But in that dark shelter, two things stood out.

They offered us tanav, which is a traditional yogurt-based soup, usually made with barley or another grain and greens. You’ll see a picture in the exhibition of them filling bowls with this soup.

I ate some of it. The hospitality shown to us as foreign journalists—I’m Armenian, but we were coming from the outside—was extraordinary. This was the only food they had, and they were offering us hospitality out of what little they had left.

The joy they showed in doing that little thing—it wasn’t little, let me put it that way.

The wedding ceremony was another example. That was hope. That was light for us.

Every time Der Varazdat took a trip to the front and came back—he was baptizing soldiers at the front and then returning—he would repeat this over and over throughout the weeks of the war. He was also a light.

I think the last photograph in the exhibition, or close to the last photograph, was taken in Goris. It shows women crushing freshly picked grapes with their bare hands to make wine.

They had already been displaced. They were in Armenia, in a border city, but they were already on the Armenian side as refugees, and they were making wine.

If you are from the Valley or have been around the Valley, you know winemakers. You don’t produce wine that you don’t plan to drink later on—or sell, at the very least. How long does it take for that wine to ferment properly and become good wine?

These people had hope. They were crushing grapes with their fingers as a tangible manifestation of their hope that someday they would drink that wine.

Finding Humanity and Hope: During the 44-day war on Artsakh in 2020, Armenian refugee women of Artsakh crushing freshly picked grapes to make wine. Photo by Ezras Tellalian

SCS: That’s pretty powerful. What do you hope people will take away from your photography exhibition?

Ezras Tellalian: Camus has a quote that goes something like, in the midst of winter, he found that there was this warmth. In the summer, there was a coolness. He goes through the seasons and through these experiences.

War is dark. I don’t want to sugarcoat it at all. Yes, the book is about light, hope and resilience in the midst of this darkness. But it is still dark.

However, there are those of us who lose our humanity through the darkness, and there are some who not only keep their humanity but are able to share it with others.

SCS: That’s beautiful. Is there anything else you would like to add?

Ezras Tellalian: If it’s in your heart, think and pray for these people, who have all been displaced. They cannot go back to their homes anymore, whether they were born and raised there or moved there in the past decade or two.

For me, it doesn’t matter. That was their home. All of them have now been forcibly displaced from their indigenous land.

And not only for these people, but for all people who are struggling with the same or a similar type of situation. I could go down the list. I won’t, but there is a list of places throughout the world where there are similar struggles.

As human beings, I want us to hang on to what is left of our humanity.