Early Life and Education
Nubar Alexanian was born in 1950 in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was the second of four children and was prized as the first son in an orthodox Armenian family. He was the grandson of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, and grew up speaking Armenian with his grandfather who lived in the apartment upstairs, only learning English upon entering elementary school.
Alexanian was the first in his family to go to college. He attended Boston University for two years in the thick of the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, and it was then that he first began taking pictures in an effort to understand and describe what he saw. Alexanian explains, "a camera gives you the license to do almost anything. I picked up a camera as a way of getting closer to what was happening in Boston during that era." He describes "the power of photography" as an act of witness: a way to observe the world up close, in a personal way. When describing himself as a student and a budding photographer in a competitive field, Alexanian credits growing up in a working-class family with giving him the motivation and work ethic to succeed as a photographer.
After two years at BU, Alexanian took time off to attend and teach at the New England School of Photography. He then left photography school and later became a member of the first class in the University Without Walls program at the University of Massachusetts, where he got credit for teaching at the New England School of Photography from 1973-1974. He graduated in 1974 with a BA in Liberal Arts.
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