Toros Khachatryan, 2025 East-West Resident
While soaking up the city’s vibrant art scene, founder of Box Photo Lab and photographer, Toros Khachatryan, found more than just a space to explore and create. He rediscovered his true creative mission. In this interview, Toros shares how this experience sparked a new direction for his creative projects and reinforced his commitment to nurturing photography in Armenia.
Having recently completed your East-West Residency at the Villa Empain, what aspects of the experience stood out the most for you?
For me, the main thing was simply being chosen – it gave me a clear goal and motivation to create something meaningful. The Villa Empain itself, with its architecture and atmosphere, was inspiring, but being in Belgium, one of Europe’s artistic centers, was even more impactful. I met many people, visited museums, and absorbed a lot of culture. All of these experiences together made the residency truly valuable.
After years of building and running Box Photo Lab, residency at the Villa Empain offered you the space to finally focus on long-held creative ideas. Could you share more about your projects you are working on, the inspiration behind them, and how your time in Brussels influenced their development and progress?
When I first arrived at Villa Empain, I imagined I would finally have the time and space to concentrate solely on my personal creative ideas. But traveling and meeting people in Brussels, Barcelona, Antwerp, and Paris who were doing similar work made a deep impact on me.
Through these encounters, I came to a realization: whether I want it or not, Box Photo Lab itself is my true creative mission. It’s more than just a lab or a business – it’s the framework through which I want to shape culture, create opportunities, and open space for others to express themselves through photography. My time in Brussels gave me the clarity to embrace this role fully and to focus my energy on developing the Lab as both my artistic practice and my contribution to a broader community.
In recent years, Box Photo Lab has been one of the most prominent analog photography players in Yerevan, Armenia. How does it compare to the one in Belgium, and what, if anything, from the Brussels scene do you think could enrich the Yerevan community?
In Brussels and other cities, I found labs working on the same professional level as Box Photo Lab in Yerevan, with similar equipment and quality. The difference was scale – ten times more labs and twenty to thirty times more films processed each day. That realization pushed me to see that in Yerevan, our mission can’t only be about services. We need to focus on building an audience, supporting photographers through exhibitions and open calls, engaging younger generations, and working with Armenia’s photographic archives to digitize and share them. That’s how we can truly enrich the scene here.
Moments from Toros Khachatryan's East-West Residency
Aside from your original intentions, what new ideas or directions emerged during your time in Brussels?
As I said, in Brussels I realized Box Photo Lab should grow beyond services into a cultural platform – supporting exhibitions, open calls, and archives. I also re-realized we have the only public darkroom in Yerevan with excellent equipment, and I want to make it more active through analog printing and exhibitions. Brussels gave me the confidence that I am able to do that.
Looking ahead, what are the next steps for your project, and what directions are you most excited to explore?
Some may know that during that trip, I met the second Toros in my life – a photo lab owner who had worked with Henri Cartier-Bresson, Josef Koudelka, Sebastião Salgado, and even David Lynch. He inspired me a lot. The first thing I did when I returned to Yerevan was start reaching out to archive owners and curators, offering to print an entire exhibition completely on my side, with no fees for anything. With that, we are slowly starting to move in the direction I was describing – to keep the regular photo lab with great services, but also give more emphasis to being a cultural hub and one of the only photography-specialized spaces in Yerevan.