For the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Istanbul-based Depo culture and arts center is putting on several exhibitions about families who were forced to leave their homes and properties or killed in various cities in Anatolia, Today’s Zaman reports.

The first of these shows “Armenian Family Stories and Lost Landscapes,” featuring a photography and research project by Helen Sheehan about three families who are currently living in diaspora, is now on view in the Tophane neighborhood of Istanbul.

Irish artist Sheehan became interested in the subject while she was a teacher at the Mechitarist Seminary School on the Armenian Island of St. Lazzaro in Venice in the 1990s. In 2009, she decided to do research on Armenian diaspora in Paris and London where she was able to find members of these families. The ancestors of the people she found were from the eastern Anatolian city of Diyarbakır, they knew as Digranagerd, and from Marash, Zeytun and Van provinces.

For the exhibition, she selected a series of photographs taken in the properties of these people, sometimes projecting their old photos onto the wall of a dilapidated house, or with the daily objects of family members such as a scarf or a pocket watch.

Asena Günal, program coordinator at Depo, explained to Sunday's Zaman that they wanted to expose the lost past of the Armenian people. “Rather than documents showing numbers or facts, we are trying to exhibit human stories and we believe this is more effective. In our previous exhibitions on the same topic, it was clearly seen that once these people were living here together with us and we were next to each other in cultural and social fields, they contributed a lot to the cultural heritage of the area.

"We will continue to do so. This year is very important because it marks the 100th anniversary of the genocide and it has a symbolic meaning. So we will be showcasing a number of shows both from Armenian artists living in diaspora and also artists from Turkey who are interested in the topic,” she explains.

Regarding the current exhibition, Günal says the photographer is attempting to bring their past back to places she calls lost landscapes. “She is kind of reviving these families in the lands from where they were forced to move,” she notes.

In his article in the show's catalogue, Dickran Kouymijan writes: “Sheehan's photographs and her profound texts on exile and extermination, on Genocide and its negation, her determination through art to allow the Armenians to inhabit their homes again; she tries and for most succeeds in creating optimal conditions to re-imagine a past that in many respects has in fact been resurrected, at least in Diyarbakir, renewed like the Church of St. Giragos has been restored.”

The exhibition will run through Feb 8.