Shavarsh Karapetyan

I have had to slow down on my zine production for an imminent deadline, but for sanity and a creative break, I took the time last weekend to work on this zine about Shavarsh Karapetyan.

“In difficult moments like this, your love for fellow humans grows even stronger,”

In 1976 one of Yerevan’s trolleybuses plunged into the Lake, no one knows the exact cause of the accident, the crash made aloud noise which alerted some athletes nearby one was the champion fin swimmer  Shavarsh Karapetyan.

He repeatedly dived into the cold, dark, murky waters of Yerevan Lake over 40 times, retrieving people from the bus in which they were trapped and dying. Every dive took about 25 seconds.
On his last dive, on the verge of fainting, he emerged clutching a seat cushion instead of a victim. “I had nightmares about that cushion for a long time. I could have saved someone else’s life,”