Santa Barbara is an exploration of family, memory, and the American dream.

Inspired by the 1980s American soap opera Santa Barbara, Markosian’s mother, then 35, placed an ad through a Russian matchmaking agency in search of a man who could help her build a new life in America. In 1996, when Markosian was seven years old, her mother woke her in the middle of the night and told her they were going on a trip. Without saying goodbye to her father, they left Moscow and arrived the following day in Santa Barbara, California, where they were met by the American man who would soon become her mother’s husband and eventually take the place of her father.

To reimagine and reconstruct this formative chapter of her life, Markosian collaborated with one of the original writers of the television series to develop a screenplay based on her family’s history. She cast actors to portray her family and returned to both of her childhood homes to reenact their departure from Russia and arrival in America. Blurring the boundaries between lived experience and fiction, the project explores how memory is constructed, performed, and inherited, while reflecting on family, displacement, and the promise of the American dream.

Santa Barbara was published in 2021 by Aperture and premiered at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, Fotomuseum Antwerp, Fotografiska and the Images Vevey Biennial. An upcoming exhibition will be presented at Les Champs Libres in 2027.