BIOGRAPHY

Nubar Alexanian is a documentary photographer and filmmaker working for major magazines, broadcast outlets and corporations in the United States and Europe. For the past 35 years he has travelled to more than 30 countries focusing on long term personal projects. Recently published his fifth book, NONFICTION: Photographs by Nubar Alexanian From the Film Sets of Errol Morris.

''For the lover of peopled enigmas and tonally rich photos splashed big across two pages, this book is a find, a breath of contemplative art in a fast-forward video world. Alexanian's pictures are metaphors. Read them like poems.'' The Boston Globe

''I believe we, reportage photographers of the human condition, have a moral duty to get as close as we can to the people we photograph and to draw attention to all the dignity in the world, as Nubar Alexanian has managed to do so well in this book. It gave me immense pleasure to see my Latin- American people portrayed with so much tenderness.'' Sebastiao Salgado

''...an authentic expression of our geography and our people making at the same time a personal statement which is artistically original and morally compelling.'' Mario Vargas Llosa

In 1996 his second book, Where Music Comes From, was published by Dewi Lewis Publications, Manchester, England. This work, his first major color project, explores what inspires the great musicians of our time, documenting the creative processes of musicians such as Wynton Marsalis, Philip Glass, Emmylou Harris, Paul Simon and others. It was chosen by the New York Public Library as one of the best books of 1997 for young adults.

''Nubar Alexanian, after a five-year trek across the music landscape, has done his finest work, including such diverse music personalities as Philip Glass, Aretha Franklin, Wynton Marsalis, the Roches, Paul Simon, Junior Wells and Emmylou Harris. To prepare for this project the photographer bought their music, listened to it all, watched them rehearse and perform, hung out with them, and finally, photographed them. Alexanian's photographs are brilliant, imaginative, compelling and very moving.'' The Picture Professional by Fred & Gloria McDarrah

''I can name only a small handful of photographers now plying their trade who share Nubar's passion (for his craft and his subjects) while at the same time retaining what amounts to an unswerving committment to ''pure photojournalism,''a style of reportage in the finest documentary tradition.'' David Friend, Former Director of Photography, Life Magazine

In 2001, his current book, Gloucester Photographs was published by Walker Creek Press, and is about his home town of Gloucester Massachusetts. "For those intrigued with Gloucester, these photographs are an intimate exploration of her complexity and beauty, celebrating what it is that draws us to this place and why. For those who call it home, Alexanian’s Gloucester–his people and landscapes–resonate so deeply and eloquently, they invite a reaffirmation of our devotion, revealing more of our soul than our image. In these documentary photographs, image transcends moment, specificity gives way to metaphor, and our experience is transformed to a poetic discovery of this special place." From The Book Jacket

“These images manage to be beautiful and honest at the same time. They are the real Gloucester, hard edges and all,” Sebastian Junger, author, The Perfect Storm

When I first saw Nubar Alexanian's tender and astute new book of photos, Gloucester Photographs, I had a sense of moving backwards in time. Images of clam diggers on mud flats, beach goers surrounding a giant sand sculpture in the shape of a deformed man, teenagers in the back of a rented limousine on prom night - all could be fifty years old, others even older. None are. Alexanian's new book and the show that commemorates it pay homage to a city and perhaps a way of life in decline: Gloucester is a community where people live near to their relatives, visit their neighbors, worship together. What could be stranger? One thing: Alexanian's treatment of fish, their eyes, their fins, their behead bodies being cleaned. In his fish photos Alexanian finds a metaphor of the people of Gloucester - endangered, atavistic, communal - and they're as riveting as they are forlorn. Christopher Millis The Boston Phoenix

A sense of serenity pervades Alexanian's work in his new book, Gloucester Photographs. Here are moments plucked from narratives, some peaceful, others pulsing: stories we don't know, lives of which we are not part. But Alexanian gives us enough so that we can imagine the rest, as painful or jubilant or curious as our hearts believe the stories to be. Haley Kaufman, The Boston Globe Arts Section

Alexanian aims for a strange and deeply affecting digging beyond surfaces, similar to the work of an archeologist. If the painters’ rendition of Gloucester’s luminism is achieved by means of the brush adding color to the canvas, in Alexanian’s photographs, mainly those which depict the sea and the land of Gloucester, the surface seems to have been etched, as though the photographer wanted to make way for the light to go through the image. In combination with his adherence to black and white only, this gravure-like quality turns many of Alexanian’s photographs into intensely physical, concrete and often raw images. In these images activity is something which unites the natural world of water and rock, ice and trees, and leaves and snow with the world of men and women and children going about their business against the immensity of the landscape.Taline Voskeritchian artsMedia Magazine

FILMS: Highlights

Flamenco Nuevo, 2007 Director & Directory of Photography, four camera HD shoot in Spain about a flamenco troupe, for broadcast sponsored by Bose Corporation. 90 Minutes.

Flamenco Shorts, 2004 Director & Director of Photography, shot in HD on sound stage in Halifax, NS, four short films of flamenco performances, Bose Corporation.

The Clifford Ball, 1994 co-director of a documentary film about the band PHISH half hour special aired on MTV.

The Professor of Swing, 1998, cinematic portrait of Wynton Marsalis, work in progress.

He lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts with his wife and daughter and loves fly fishing for striped bass.