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Like There's No Tomorrow
Կարծես թե վաղը չկար

by Astrig Agopian

What does war look like after the last bombs have fallen?

On September 20, 2023, Nagorno-Karabakh came entirely under the control of Azerbaijan.

Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan had been fighting over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, with the region’s ethnic Armenian majority establishing the unrecognized breakaway Republic of Artsakh, while the Azerbaijani government attempted to claim the region as their own as it fell within their borders.

Sporadic violence escalated into war between the countries throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Life Before in Nagorno-Karabakh

In 2021, life slowly came back to Nagorno-Karabakh. But the traces of the 2020 war were everywhere, and the atmosphere, heavy.

While children laughed and played around, teams of deminers were working everyday to find and destroy mines, cluster munitions, bullets and everything that made the soil dangerous.

Traditional “banaki qef” parties were organized to send off young men to their military service. Dances and laughs to mask the deep worry for a loved one during uncertain times and fragile peace.

An old woman walks in a park in Stepanakert, the capital and biggest city of Nagorno-Karabakh, nestled up in the mountains, a typical landscape of the region. April 23, 2021

In Nagorno-Karabakh, there was only one pub, called “Bardak” (“mess” in Russian). It was created by 32-year-old Azat, a native of Stepanakert, who saw four wars in his life despite his young age. In the 90s, he was a child, hiding in shelters with his mother and sister, while his father was fighting. In 2016 he fought, and after the April War, decided to open the pub. In 2020, he fought, was severely injured, but decided to reopen the pub a few months later. That’s when this was filmed.

Azat remembers the 27 of September 2020, when the war started. We see people trying to have fun and live despite everything in the aftermath of the war. But at the same time being so worried they even teach children how to use weapons, fearing if they die, the kids might have to protect themselves.
In front of the pub stands a rocket, when playing around, people make a contest of who can wear a gas mask the fastest. In a region that many feel has no future, the venue doesn't just provide Azat with a livelihood. Azat lost friends and almost a leg in the last war. Reopening Bardak was a signal of his commitment to his homeland. He was always seeking to live life to the full while rebuilding, shadowed by the need to prepare for the worst.

The worst happened in September 2023. A short war, followed by the ethnic cleansing of the region. No Armenians left in Nagorno-Karabakh for the first time in centuries. Azat fled with his family and they are now refugees in Armenia.

In December 2023, Azat reopened “Bardak” in Yerevan.

Checkpoints in and out of NK Region

After the 2020 war, and the ceasefire agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan brokered by Moscow, 2,000 Russian ‘peacekeepers’ were deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh. While during and right after the war international journalists had been able to document what happened, after February 2021, access to Nagorno-Karabakh was forbidden for them.

To access the region coming from Armenia, the only possible way became the Lachin corridor. After crossing an Armenian checkpoint on the border, there were less about a dozen Russian checkpoints to cross, where Russian ‘peacekeepers’ checked cars and paperwork. It was forbidden to film or document all that journey, and strictly forbidden for foreign journalists. Armenians could still cross. Nevertheless, during her trips to the region in 2021 and 2022, Astrig Agopian, shot a few details when she could.

The Blockade

While in Nagorno-Karabakh people keep on living a normal life and try to reconstruct after the war, Armenians in Armenia who were also affected by the war were processing what they went through, like the young boys in their twenties who were competing their mandatory military service when the war started.
Kolya
ABOVE: Kolya at the Abastan factory, a self organized community of artists in Tumanyan, Armenia, where he can focus on his writing.

Kolya lost his legs in Nagorno-Karabakh during the 2020 war, while he was doing his military service, and was part of a group of of six boys who were surrounded for seventy days by Azerbaijani troops.
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Even after the end of the war, people had no idea what had happened to them. When they were brought back home, their story was shared and most people in Armenia now know about their seventy days in a blockade, wandering around the abandoned villages, miraculously surviving.
“War is ugly. And beautiful. It purifies. Cuts the bullshit. Unlike peace — war never asks you if you are ready for a lesson.”
Kolya walking in an underground passage in Yerevan. Some of his texts in his own handwriting in Russian (his mother tongue).
Kolya in his apartment in Yerevan. Some of his texts in his own handwriting in Russian (his mother tongue).
Arthur
Arthur in the rehearsal room for dancers in the underground of the Armenian National Opera and Ballet Theater in Yerevan.
Arthur sitting on a bench near his former dance school in Yerevan.
Arthur is 26 years old. He was a professional dancer in Yerevan until the 2020 war, and also studied to work in the IT sector. During the war he was enlisted, and he lost one his legs while fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh. “It is a good thing that I was already transitioning to IT, because I knew I could work and make a decent salary despite everything,” he says.

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The young man misses dancing, and he is okay with talking about he lived through, doesn’t express any regret but wants to move on. “The situation and my new reality does not affect my goals. It is important to keep focused on your aim, it is the only way to heal. I got married, I have plans to move to Spain for work, but I would like to come back to Armenia after, have a family. I have a prosthetic leg now, but I am the same person and I want the same life.”
Sarkis, his wife Astghik and their two kids in the trailer they live in.
Sarkis
Sarkis is 31 years old. He is from Nagorno-Karabakh and during the 2020 war, a kamikaze drone killed soldiers who were evacuating the wounded, under his eyes, and left him with injuries and burns. “Most days I still feel a lot of pain. Inside, my organs, are burnt too.”
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He is currently living in a small trailer on a landfill behind Yerevan, in terrible conditions, with his wife and two small children. His mother, who cannot move since she had a heart attack, out of fear, is laying on an improvised bed in one corner. He had to come to the Armenian capital to get treatment. “I am ashamed to be away from Karabakh, especially now during the blockade,” he said.

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Sarkis felt like a second-class citizen in the capital and dreamed to go back to Karabakh as soon as the blockade would be over. But he lost his homeland in the meantime.
“Most days I still feel a lot of pain.
Inside, my organs, are burnt too.”
Sarkis shows the burns on his body following his injury during the 2020 war.
Astghik and their daughter.
The link between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia was challenged after the 2020 war with the presence of Russian soldiers and constant tension with Baku. But through the Lachin Corridor, people could go back and forth and necessary goods were delivered.

Until in December 2022, Azerbaijan blocked the Lachin corridor, only road connecting the region to Armenia and the outside world, with no reaction from the Russian ‘peacekeeping’ presence. During 10 months, an increasingly intense humanitarian crisis unfolded for the blockaded population, who did not have necessary goods, food, medication, gas, electricity and water.

Armenia

Portrait of Norayr, in the back his mother Nariné and her youngest son
Aren, in their house in Tegh.
Portrait of sisters Naré, Anna and Anoush in their house in Tegh.

Nagorno-Karabakh

Nariné shows a picture of her son Narek doing his military service in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh.
“I think I might never see anything good in my life.”
Two months after the ‘banaki qef’, farewell party organized before 18 years old Narek’s military mandatory service in Nagorno-Karabakh, his family had to leave the village of Aghavno which was handed over to Azerbaijan, and moved to Tegh in Armenia. The village is on the border, and often comes under fire, but it is near the Lachin corridor, and Nariné his mother wanted to remain close to Nagorno-Karabakh and her son. The blockade made the separation even more painful.
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Narek’s sisters Naré, Anna and Anoush feel a little isolated and there and struggle to make new friends. The oldest Naré, dreams of becoming a hairdresser. “Maybe one day I could have my own salon,” she says, blushing. She wants to move to Goris, the closest city. While being worried about their older brother, the family also has to prepare for the younger one Norayr to start his in a few months.
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“Most men around people like us are away, in the army, or dead,” Naré says. “I think I might never see anything good in my life. I feel misunderstood. There are some good people, but they don’t get it. Even other Armenians.”
“During winter, we burn wood to warm up, we use a wood stove, I kept it, because we use it like a heater, as the heater does not work without electricity.”
Photo of Lilia’s reflection on her window in her apartment in Yerevan during the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, as she says it feels like her relatives are “so close, yet so far.”
Lilia is a singer from Stepanakert and a member of the group Voices of Artsakh. “We used to tour all over the world and bring our music and flag everywhere, it was so nice. I never imagined that war would be back and that it would end like this,” she says. The young artist is 29 years old and was born a year after the end of First Nagorno-Karabakh war.

She came to Yerevan with her mother during the 2020 war, while the rest of her family stayed in Karabakh, and ended up staying there. “I was literally speechless. I lost my voice, I could not sing for months. My mom and I, we did not even speak. We just read the news, looked at each other. Texted our relatives, made sure they were alive, did humanitarian aid work. That’s it,” recalls Lilia.
After half a year following the end of the war, Lilia went back to work. She began singing again, worked hard. When the blockade started, she continued. “Even when I try to smile, my eyes betray me, you can see from my look that I am deeply sad,” she says. “The hardest part is the guilt you feel being here able to eat whatever you want, when your own family members barely find enough to survive,” she adds. Lilia called and texted her relatives everyday, when connections worked during the blockade.

A portrait of Nana in her high school in Dilijan, Armenia.

A poster made for Nana by her classmates while she was stuck in Nagorno-Karabakh because of the blockade.

A portrait of Nana in her corner at the art studio of the high school.

Nana sends a picture of her at her high school graduation to her family. Messages in English.
Message of her father written with Cyrillic alphabet in Karabakh Armenian dialect: "my darling baby girl, it’s cold, be careful not to catch a cold"

A view of the city of Goris, last Armenian city before the Lachin corridor that leads to Nagorno-Karabakh, and the before the border with Azerbaijan.

Areknaz and her daughter are staying at the Lara Hotel in Goris. They are from Shushi, a city lost by Armenians during the 2020 war and relocated to Stepanakert afterwards. They left Nagorno-Karabakh to attend a wedding in Armenia and could not head back home.        
                                                                                                                         
Arpiné left Nagorno-Karabakh for the first time in her life ever, to attend her niece’s wedding in Armenia. She arrived to Yerevan on December 11. The next day, the blockade started. Her children, friends, and students, as she is a professor of Armenian, are on the other side.

Lack of food, the shelves of all the shops are empty, people start exchanging the products that they have.

Lack of medication.

Lack of baby food.

Attack / Expulsion

On September 19, Azerbaijan launches an offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh. The local population, exhausted after 10 months of blockade, unable to save the wounded and to bury the dead, fearing massacres, takes the road of exodus.

Thousands of people flee, until after a few days, more than 100,000 people, the whole population of the region, has left. Armenians relieve the trauma of the 1915 genocide, while one term starts to appear in news headlines, the events are qualified as “ethnic cleansing”.

Kornidzor, Armenia

One by one, in a steady non-stop stream, cars, trucks, minivans crawl past the checkpoints into Armenia. They fled their homeland: Nagorno-Karabakh. In just a few days, it will be empty of Armenians for the first time in centuries. Volunteers have brought water and food and give it to people who have been on the road for dozens of hours, and under blockade for over 10 months.

Images by Astrig Agopian

Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh

The military offensive of Azerbaijan on Nagorno-Karabakh is short, but intensive. No international journalists have access to the region, but thanks to the local journalists who share some footage on social media, we see why people took the road of exodus.

Images by Marut Vanyan, Siranush Sargsyan on their social media and sent by locals.

Samantha Power

Dozens of journalists arrived to cover the exodus of the Armenians. The top U.S. humanitarian aid official Samantha Power came to the border and said she was aware of “very troubling reports of violence against civilians” in Nagorno-Karabakh, criticized the fact that Azerbaijan had blocked access to the enclave for international observers and announced the U.S. would provide $11.4M in humanitarian aid.

After Samantha Power left, so did many journalists. And after several days of exodus, the influx of people coming out stopped. Nagorno-Karabakh was effectively empty of its Armenian population. But in Armenia, 100,000 people had just become refugees. The media attention decreased, and with a new conflict in Israel/Palestine, disappeared.

An empty road near the road sign that says “Artsakh”, the Armenian name for the region of Nagorno-Karabakh near the border and the entrance of the Lachin Corridor

What People Took

After the 2020 war, some Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh had already lost their homes. The inhabitants of Hadrut left in a hurry when bombardments started, not knowing when they would return. They did not know they would actually not be able to go back to their homes. Most people did not have time to pack anything. The only thing they took: the key to their homes.

While after the 2020 war, the majority of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh were able to go back to their homes, or moved to another part of the region if they lost their village or city, after the war of September 2023, it’s the full population of Nagorno-Karabakh that fled. More than 100,000 people lost their homes.

Depending on where they are from, how heavy the fighting was, if they were evacuated or had to flee barefoot, they all tried to bring something from a region that was their homeland, and where they do not know if they will ever be able to go back.

Alyona

Alyona

From Kers village in Martuni region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
From Kers village in Martuni region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“I have accumulated these bookmarks over the years. They are different objects that I used as bookmarks. And I did not initially mean to collect them, but it became a collection. It just happened.”

Gayane

Gayane

From Stepanakert.
From Stepanakert.
“I remember the displaced people from Shushi and Hadrut, after the 2020 war, when they came. One of my friends from Shushi, Anna, and when I asked what she was regretting that she could not take with her, Anna told me it was the pictures.”

Robert

Robert

From Stepanakert. Famous artist.
From Stepanakert. Famous artist.
“I brought 250 paintings, apart from these ones, some big ones on canvas, I brought just one small sculpture, a picture of my mother and my father. But I left my soul there. That’s it. I did not bring it. I couldn’t. How can you? When your everything is related to that place. Generally, humans are like that. It’s not just me. I think it’s not just me, and not an exaggeration.”

Ani

Ani

From Stepanakert.
She wants to become a photojournalist and actually became one during the blockade, documenting it for international media. She left the region to go study in Armenia with one of the last buses of evacuation by Russian ‘peacekeepers’ during the blockade,
From Stepanakert.
She wants to become a photojournalist and actually became one during the blockade, documenting it for international media. She left the region to go study in Armenia with one of the last buses of evacuation by Russian ‘peacekeepers’ during the blockade,

Ira

Ira

Ani’s mother
Ani’s mother
“They gave us these coupons to allow us to get some groceries, buy products. It was rationed so each family could have one kilo of flour, two kilos of fruits etc.”

Anna

Anna

From Shushi, a city lost in 2020.
From Shushi, a city lost in 2020.
“It has an important meaning.” “On September 16, when the frontline was on high alert, they called my brother and he was drafted.” “He started to pack and that was very normal for us, it had happened often, we were used to it. And this happened during the blockade.”

Anna

Anna

From Stepanakert.
From Stepanakert.
“I brought back stones with me from Artsakh as memories, since my daughter is in Yerevan and at that moment there was not even space in my brain to think about bringing something, but my daughter asked me, she said bring a stone for me from there, as a memory.”

Angela

Angela

From Shushi, a city lost in 2020. Her youngest son Sassoon died during the 2020 war. Her oldest son Gago died in the explosion of a fuel depot where people were desperately trying to get gas to flee Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023.
From Shushi, a city lost in 2020. Her youngest son Sassoon died during the 2020 war. Her oldest son Gago died in the explosion of a fuel depot where people were desperately trying to get gas to flee Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023.
“I went to the cemetery, I saw that someone was dismantling his child’s tombstone, to take it. I said I am not ready to evacuate. I said if I leave, I need to take the tombstone of my Sassoon. They told me we are supposed to take this heavy rock? I said I am not leaving without it. I am not leaving without it.”

Noune

Noune

From Stepanakert.
From Stepanakert.
“It was on the last day, we were about to evacuate. My friend's family was about to evacuate on the 25th. We went to bury a letter. While we were burying the letter, I saw a green cone and I thought in the future when I talk about Artsakh at least I would have something that I brought with me to show them.”

Marut

Marut

From Stepanakert. Journalist. He was documenting the blockade and the exodus on social media and helping foreign newsrooms to cover it.
From Stepanakert. Journalist. He was documenting the blockade and the exodus on social media and helping foreign newsrooms to cover it.
“I remembered, it crossed my mind that at time when people and tourists could still come to Karabakh, there was an Australian guy that I was showing around, he took a stone from the side of road and I was thinking why is he taking a stone from near the river.”

Mary

Mary

From the Moscow diaspora, in September 2022 moved to Stepanakert to work at the office of the Ombudsman (Human Rights Defender).
From the Moscow diaspora, in September 2022 moved to Stepanakert to work at the office of the Ombudsman (Human Rights Defender).
“In reality, these objects, I think for me, represent Artsakh. The pomegranate I had taken it on the road back from the monastery of Amaras in the region of Martuni towards Stepanakert. I took the pomegranate and dried it. One of the strongest symbols is the pomegranate.”

Donara

Donara

From Stepanakert.
From Stepanakert.
“Well when this war started, we were in the basement. Actually, wearing those slippers, in the basement. We spent like 4-5 days in the basement. They told us the situation was bad but we went home to try to cook something and we saw that people were evacuating, they were leaving the city.”
ABOVE:
A fence in Kolkhozashen, Nagorno-Karabakh.

About this Project

Astrig Agopian: Like There’s No Tomorrow [Կարծես թե վաղը չկար] is supported through ART WORKS Projects’ Emerging Lens Fellowship. Partially funded through the National Endowment for the Arts, Emerging Lens provides unrestricted stipends, professional mentorship, editorial and production support to emerging visual storytellers across the globe working to document human rights issues through lived experiences. You can learn more about Emerging Lens here .

About Astrig Agopian

Astrig Agopian is a French-Lebanese-Armenian journalist, documentary photographer and filmmaker born in Marseille in 1998. She started her career as a TV reporter and video journalist, learning the ropes of journalism while covering Brexit, French politics and the Covid pandemic for French TV channels. Since 2021, she has documented the wars in Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, massive protests in Georgia and reported in France, Italy and Lebanon. Her work has been featured in dozens of international news outlets including Agence France-Presse (AFP), Arte, Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS), Le Figaro, France 24, Puls 4 Austria and others. Her photography focuses on the intersection between geopolitics, territory, marginality and memory. She documents identity struggles, human rights issues and longterm consequences of conflicts, mainly covering Europe, the South Caucasus and the Middle East.

About this Website

All photographs, videos, and essays by Astrig Agopian. All rights reserved by the photographer. No part of this website may be reproduced without the prior permission of the publisher, ART WORKS Projects.

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Creative Director: John Lee, Durational
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Astrig Agopian: Like There’s No Tomorrow  
Կարծես թե վաղը չկար is supported by the Art
Works Projects Emerging Lens Fellowship.