“Like There’s No Tomorrow” makes first full exhibition in Watertown gallery space
WATERTOWN, Mass. — “What would you bring with you if you had to leave your home immediately?” French-Armenian photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Astrig Agopian poses this question in her multimedia exhibition, Like There’s No Tomorrow, which documents the lives of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, where the Azerbaijan-led war broke out in 2020 and escalated in 2023 into a mass displacement widely described by human rights organizations as ethnic cleansing. The exhibition is on display at Watertown’s Project Save Photo Archive gallery through Jan. 17, 2026.
This timely exhibit focuses on a region that Armenians have inhabited for millennia and which has endured centuries of upheaval. Agopian’s photographs — blending documentary and portraiture style — and news-style video dig deeply into questions of cultural heritage, identity in diaspora and wartime displacement. The exhibit is presented in partnership with ART WORKS Projects, a Chicago- and Hague-based visual arts nonprofit.
About the exhibition
As a photojournalist for international news outlets, Agopian covered the unfolding conflict in her ancestral homeland, but what she discovered while documenting the war was a unique view inside the emotional toll on the region’s inhabitants. Her multi-year travels to the area garnered interview footage and extensive photographic documentation of war and its effects, following individuals and families as they navigated violence, loss and displacement. She says she sought ways to go beyond the expected coverage: the images of people fleeing on clogged roads, desperate faces and bombed out villages.
Her exhibition emphasizes a stirring collection of photographic diptychs highlighting the individuals Agopian encountered over several years, offering portraits of both the people and the objects they preserved when forced to flee. Simple belongings like coffee jars, keys and family heirlooms come to represent all that remains of a once bustling home life in the region. The project combines powerful photography, oral histories and multimedia assets into a living archive that also serves educational and advocacy purposes.
“Astrig invites us to consider how people live in and endure the unimaginable: war, hatred and revisionist history, and what they cling to or carry with them when they’re forced to flee,” says Dr. Arto Vaun, executive director of Project Save. “Her work reflects our mission to preserve and share the stories and images that define the global Armenian experience.”
To deepen the narrative, the exhibition includes historical photographs from Project Save’s own collections, presented alongside Agopian’s contemporary work. These archival images document Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh across the 19th and 20th centuries, amplifying a continuum of Armenian presence and resilience in the region.
Gallery location and hours
Like There’s No Tomorrow is on view at the Project Save Photo Archive gallery, located at 600 Pleasant Street in Watertown, Mass. Gallery hours are 2 p.m.-5:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays and by appointment. The Gallery is closed on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. The exhibition opened on November 25 and closes on January 17.
Support
The exhibition is supported by 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 working to document global human rights issues through lived experiences.
