Aram Voves

Aram Voves was born 1970 in Vienna into a family of performers and visual artists. Since he was eight years old, he spent every school-vacation in swinging London at the home of his aunt, a very artistic person herself. Musicians, actors, models, painters where the daily visitors in her “open house” on Kings Road in Chelsea. Aram’s earliest inspiration was the action on Kings Road in the 70s and 80 and he always took pictures with his pocket-camera to send home to Vienna.

London with its advertising art-, pop- and rock - culture, was definitely the reason for Aram’s free approach toward the craft. Soon Britain’s versatile landscape also became of interest to this photography-apprentice, and for a while this interest even took over. A certain influence of old masters can easily be seen in Voves’ early photographs of landscapes. The kind of cool conservatism in these works must have had its roots in an early influence through arts history. Next to the family home in Vienna, stands the Museum of Fine Arts History with its world-renowned collection of the paintings of the old masters. As a kid, Aram used to stroll through these classic halls every Sunday morning with his mother, to view the pictures and sculptures.

Later on, he discovered Jewish history of the 19th and 20th century in Vienna, with its great contributors towards world arts and sciences. And Vienna’s vanguard photographers of that time, appeared to him as the shining examples of modern photography, which they truly were. Emil Mayer, Rudolf Kopitz, Herbert Bayer, Raoul Hausmann, Trude Fleischmann, Laszlo Willinger, Madame D’Ora, Edith Tudor Hart, just to name few. All members of the great area which ended when the Nazis took over Austria in 1938.

After spending a year in London, Aram finished high school back in Vienna. Although his father recognized the visual talents of the young artist, he still double- and triple-checked with acquainted photographers. Among them, painter and photographer Roland Pletersky – himself famous for his works in New York Vogue. Pletersky showed Aram some of the tricks of the trade, which have long since become technique, artistically and business-wise. That was of great help to the youngster, because Aram’s father (like Roland Pletersky) never really believed in art schools and the young man had to see how he could get his art together on his own, and just by doing.

And that he did. During his teens he must have already read through the entire literature on the subject. Up to this day and still, Andreas Feininger’s book “The Complete Photographer” is Aram’s bible of photojournalism and artistic photography. He also subscribed to the highly regarded correspondence course of the New York Institute of Photography and closed his studies with a print course at St. Martin’s School of Art in London.

Back in Vienna, his first assignment stretched over the period of a whole year. It consisted of an extensive photo documentation of the Vienna police department’s work with mentally handicapped and physically disabled persons, making them fit for survival in city-traffic.

Aram Voves also photographed locations in and around the concentration-camp Mauthausen in Austria for Stanley Kubrick’s "Wartime Lies", a Holocaust film based on Louis Begley's 1991 novel, which Mr. Kubrick had hoped to direct, but later set the project aside, when it became clear that Steven Spielberg would beat him to the theatres with "Schindler's List" in 1993.

Ever since he could hold a camera, Aram was the designated photographer of his family’s business, a theatrical production company since 1912, and in music since his father took over. Therefore, his portfolio also includes publicity-shots and concert reportages of some of the really great musicians in classics, avant garde, jazz, R&B and ethno.

A tumor in the spine paralysed Aram for some time. This set him back several years in his work. And he will never forget the magic date of 11. 11. 1999 when he did return back to work. Before his illness, Aram had also been quite a good basketball player. So, when during the Balkan war, the Yugoslav champion Red Star Beograd was forced to play its European-Cup home games on neutral grounds (by order of the international basketball federation, FIBA) and Red Star had chosen Vienna as the venue for the play-offs, Aram worked as the team’s photographer, while Red Star took on the likes of the champions of Russia, Italy, France, Greece and Spain.

In 2012 the tumor in Aram’s spine returned, he has now an incomplete paraplegia and has to use crutches. But this does not stop him!
In 2015 Aram met the Fools Brothers and they decided to make a movie. It was Aram’s first movie, “Fools Dimension”, starring Jango Edwards, the King of Fools. The film was nominated 3 times already and won two prices, “Best Indie Short Film” at the Istanbul Film Festival and “The Critics Choice Award” at Tagore International Film Festival, India.