Nelli Shishmanyan will document daily village life along the Azerbaijan-Armenian border. Shishmanyan aims to address the impact that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, even during peacetime, has had on Armenian and Azeri communities living in close proximity to one another. Her goal is to portray the many shared experiences of these two ethnic groups, despite their respective country’s political tensions.
Shishmanyan is a freelance photographer who began her career in 2006 after participating in a World Press Photo seminar on photojournalism. That same year, Shishmanyan participated in the MerhaBarev project, a collaboration between Armenian and Turkish photojournalists. Over the course of eight years, MerhaBarev photographers exhibited their work in Armenia, Georgia, and Turkey. She has contributed to ArmeniaNow and Hetq, and her photographs have been published in the World Press Photo, Newsweek Russia, and Ogoniok Magazine, among others. In 2012, she won first prize in the British Council’s Na/Ne Media Award.