Almost 100 years ago, more than 1 million people died in the midst of the Armenian genocide. Armenian leaders were rounded up and killed. Men were put to work as beasts of burden. Women and children were forced to march to imaginary camps in Syria that Ottoman Empire authorities knew they would never reach.
The forced eviction from their land created a massive diaspora of Armenian communities around the world. Armenians are now preparing to mark the centennial of that tragedy with the official remembrance day set for April 24. With the visit of reality stars Kim and Khloé Kardashian last week to the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, the massacre is getting more attention than it has in years.
Photographer Scout Tufankjian asked Armenians living not just in their homeland but across the globe to submit their thoughts on what their heritage means to them. In this photoseries, a preview of her new book There Is Only the Earth: Images from the Armenian Diaspora Project, Tufankjian combines their answers with the photos she traveled around the world to capture, showing how a people managed to not just survive but thrive after nearly being extinguished.