A window into another world
Cumberland student’s photo essay on Armenian culture has gallery showing
CUMBERLAND – Throughout December, Cumberland High School senior Oliver Doyle periodically updated the list of Christmas gift ideas he kept on the kitchen cupboard. One day, his mother noticed a vague addition: a Stanmeyer workshop.
Christine Doyle knew her son had been in contact with John Stanmeyer, a contributing photographer to National Geographic whom he idolized.
“Where is the workshop?” she asked him. “Is it at a coffee shop in the Berkshires?”
No, he told her. It’s in Armenia, and it’s in March.
Her first response was a hard no. That would involve Oliver flying overseas somewhat alone and missing two weeks of school to do so.
But Christine got in contact with Stanmeyer, and the photographer helped set her mind at ease. She and Oliver’s father felt even more comfortable after speaking with Principal Alan Tenreiro, who expressed support and excitement for the idea.
“It was really going to add to his experience not just with photography but with life,” she said, “so we just worked through our fear and tried to help him to have an experience that we knew would really be important to him and fulfilling for him.”
Between a ritualistic “tooth party,” a breakfast of boiled cow feet and vodka, and a sense of hospitality foreign to many New Englanders, Oliver Doyle’s nine days in Armenia in March – during which he snapped more than 2,000 shots in villages surrounding the city of Gyumri – was certainly an experience.
Tonight, a slideshow containing 46 of his favorite shots will run on a loop at Sprout RI in Providence, along with a few photographs hung on the walls. The coworking space in the Rising Sun Mills complex is holding a public gallery opening from 5-9 p.m. tonight as part of April’s Gallery Night Providence.
Doyle had been following Stanmeyer for about a year and initiated contact with him to ask about how to get into the photojournalism field.
On December 15, Stanmeyer announced on Instagram that his next visual storytelling workshop would be held in Armenia, which he described as “one of the most fascinating, poetically beautiful, story filled countries” he’s visited.
He wrote on the social media platform, “Available to only an intimate group of 12 photographers, I will be teaching how to prepare, research, photograph and edit a passionate visual essay, no different than I do for magazines like National Geographic.”
Of the 11 others, Doyle said the youngest participant is 27 years old and that many have been in the field for years. This provided a valuable experience for him each night of the trip, as he looked at their photos and learned from Stanmeyer how to view his own work with a more impersonal eye.
“One of the points of the workshop was to be able to create a presentation that would be ready to be submitted to a magazine,” Doyle said, “so I think that that knowledge that I gained will really help me get ready to be in the field, to be able to present my work to possible job opportunities.”
Part of that process meant taking photos centered on a theme, and Doyle chose “portraits of Armenian landscapes and culture.”
Each day he traveled to a surrounding village with his translator, Hovhannes. The pair got themselves invited into residents’ homes, where they typically stayed for sometime between 45 minutes and two hours, and Doyle was struck by everyone’s welcoming attitude.
Christine Doyle said her son asked him, “Mom, what do you think would happen if someone came knocking on our door and said, ‘Can we come in and take pictures of your family?’”
“We’re so protective of our homes and our personal lives, and over there, they just opened their doors to him and were so welcoming,” she said. “And I’m so happy that he was able to experience that and see a completely different way of living.”
People would invite him in for coffee and ask if he was hungry, and if he liked Armenia so far, and how his workshop was going. Doyle spent two days with a shoemaker and his wife, and they told him he has to come back someday.
While houses were similar to American homes in some ways, one difference he observed was the ubiquity of rugs, not only on floors but also on walls and couches. Doyle also noticed a corner for religious relics, statues and crosses in every home.
One day, he and Hovhannes went to the village of Tsoghamarg, and the family hosting them had just begun a party to celebrate the arrival of their baby’s first tooth.
Cheering and happy, the family plopped handfuls of candy and popcorn on the baby’s head as the child sat on a table in the center. After the candy pouring, the family placed about 10 lightly filled balloons in front of the baby, each one containing a slip of paper with the name of an occupation.
The family would pop whichever balloon the baby picked up first, and this was supposed to represent the career that child would someday have.
Perhaps Doyle can return in 25 years to find out if this baby ever became a teacher.
Another cultural experience Doyle found unusual by American standards was eating an Armenian delicacy called khash – boiled cow feet – for breakfast.
The cow feet were boiled overnight in water with garlic, salt and pepper, he explained. In the morning, they were removed from the broth. More seasoning was added, along with crumbled lavash, a tradi- tional Armenian flatbread.
The result is a stew with the consistency of chowder or oatmeal, Doyle said. People would dip fresh bread into the dish and accompany it with a shot of vodka.
Much to his surprise, Doyle thought it was delicious.
“I had read about this in a book and I was like, ‘Oh God, I hope I don’t have to eat this,’” he said. But then he figured, “I’ve made it this far; why wouldn’t I do it now?”
This attitude reflects one of the things that most impressed Betsey MacDonald, Doyle’s teacher for AP Studio Art last year: “He’s really willing to go for it.”
Doyle decided he wanted to learn photography skills by taking APStudio Art his junior year. At that point, he hadn’t taken any photography courses at CHS, so MacDonald was a bit hesitant about letting him into the class.
It was also the first time AP Studio Art was offered at the high school, and he would be her only photography student, but Doyle wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“I like to rebel against teachers,” he said. “I’ll show you that I can do it!”
It was MacDonald that hooked Doyle up with Sprout. She had two paintings on display at the gallery a couple months ago, and the gallery manager, Shari Weinberger, asked if she had students with good work to show.
MacDonald had just seen Doyle’s photo slideshow “Armenia: The Quiet Song” – which is posted on YouTube – and suggested Weinberger run a loop of it for the show.
Weinberger said there will also be at least three of Doyle’s photos hung on the wall and for sale. They will remain up until April 29.
Sprout will also be showing the work of another Cumberland High School student, Jessica Paolo, who was recently accepted to Savannah College of Art and Design.
Sprout RI opened in January, and Weinberger thought the lobby would be a great place for art that is more than “hotel-type art” that “people could’ve walked by and ignored.
“We wanted to use it as a way to help promote young and emerging artists who might not yet be established enough to be represented by one of the more traditional galleries downtown,” she said.
Doyle first got into photography three or four years ago, after his dad got an iPhone. For the next year, he would go outside and take pictures with his dad’s phone, until he received a DSLR camera for his birthday. From there, he fell in love with photography.
Doyle said he loves “being able to capture moments that in turn tell a story to the person that’s viewing the photograph.”