‘Shades of L.A.’ Photo Project Is Putting a Face on History : Community: The Central Library is copying fragile family portraits to preserve a record of ethnic groups’ journeys here. It was Armenian Americans’ turn Saturday to share images and memories.

Sara Chitjian sat at a table at the Los Angeles Public Library surrounded by 90 years of memories.

There were photos of Chitjian’s family in Mexico City, where they settled before moving to California, and pictures of her father’s store in East L.A. Other photos showed a joyous family picnic with two generations pausing long enough for a group portrait. In another, a young Chitjian sits on a pony wearing her cowboy hat and an impish smile.

The pictures offered a glimpse of one Armenian family’s journey from the early 1900s to the present.

Chitjian was one of the participants Saturday in the Central Library’s “Shades of L.A.” project. It is a search for visual ethnic history to broaden the library’s archives by copying pictures from various ethnic groups for display. Saturday’s photo day was for the collection of pictures from the Armenian community.

“I noticed in gathering photos for the archives that there was really a lack of representation of ethnic groups,” said project director Carolyn Cole.

Cole, who is the senior librarian in charge of photos, began “Shades of L.A.” in 1991 and has collected photographs of African Americans, Native Americans, Chicano/Mexican Americans and Pacific Islander Americans and others.

Chitjian sat with volunteers Andrea Kirazian and Taline Kurdoghlian, who gingerly handled her photos with white cotton gloves as they helped select which photos would be used from the dozens Chitjian brought.

“You look just like your mother,” Kurdoghlian exclaimed as she examined a picture of Chitjian’s parents’ wedding photo from 65 years ago. “How did they meet?”

“My father was established in his business and he was looking for a wife,” Chitjian explained. “He knew that my (mother’s brother) had sisters and he said, ‘Why don’t you introduce me to one of your sisters?’ He met my mother and he looked at her hands and fell in love,” Chitjian said wistfully.

For each snapshot, there was a story.

“Photography is such a moving medium,” said Nora Janoyan, who coordinated the volunteers. “People love to tell stories about their families and we need to document this or it will die.”

California is home to about 350,000 Armenians, Janoyan said. Sylva Manoogian, manager of the library’s International Languages Department, said that in her travels to Armenia, Los Angeles was described as “Little Armenia.”

Manoogian is Armenian and understands the value of photos. As a child growing up in France during World War II, she was separated from her father, who lived in Boston where he published several newspapers. Until the family was reunited after the war, Manoogian’s mother made sure her daughter saw pictures of her father in the newspapers he published.

“That was how I came to know my father since he was such a public man,” Manoogian said.

Many of the memories stirred Saturday were bittersweet. Gioula Keotahian Sarafian of Los Angeles held a picture of her husband’s grandparents on their wedding day in 1921.

“She was found in the desert after the massacres (in 1915 more than 1 1/2 million Armenians were killed in what is now known as the country of Turkey),” she said. “All of her immediate family had been killed.”

Sylva Dakessian came from Hollywood lugging eight photo albums and dozens of loose photos that dated back to the early 1900s. She said it is important to preserve a pictorial history to maintain “continuity and a sense of time and history.”

Holding a framed photograph of her father as a child with his family in Jerusalem, Dakessian reflected on the slices of life the pictures offer.

“It is your history before you knew you had history,” she said.