Photography, History, Identity By Guy Raz, photographer, researcher and curator of local photography
In the 19th century, before modernism and the invention of photography, folklore and fables, including Arab folklore, were one of the sources for transferring memory. The stories reflected the perception of the historic time and geographical space of both narrator and audience. Folklore reinforced the story by employing supernatural and magical motifs, thus etching the story on the consciousness and memory of the audience over time. The invention of photography and the chemical reaction of silver halide to light in 1839 were regarded as a kind of miracle within the modern fable, and perceived as an alchemical event that captures the soul of the person photographed. Many of those who believed in the capture of souls – Jews and Arabs alike – refused to have their picture taken based on pagan, or alternatively, religious grounds. Nevertheless, when photography became common practice at the beginning of the 20th century, photography studios were established in the main Jewish and Palestinian cities, where they served modernism and intellectual, cultural, agricultural and industrial development and also boosted national identity. For the first time a new kind of story was created, one which was accompanied by visual evidence. A great deal has been written about 19th century photography in the Holy Land, for example, Nissan Perez’s Focus East (1988) which deals with the European photographers who came to Palestine between 1839 and 1865. These photographers, who were for the most part French and British, photographed the Christian holy places and places associated with the Biblical stories in colonial, religious, romantic, archaeological and scientific contexts. The Arab in these photographs is often perceived as an exotic figure that represents the Orient, and often as primitive. The most important books written by Palestinians were published in Europe and the United States and were not distributed in Palestine. Professor Walid Khaldi, who was born in Jerusalem and works in Beirut, put forth the photographed history of the Palestinians in 1876-1948 for the first time in his early book Before their Diaspora (1984) which deals with the depopulated villages of 1948 and in All that Remains (1992). Khaldi based his book on earlier photographs from Bonfils, the French photography studio, whose center was in Beirut, and mainly on the photographs of the photographer Khalil Raad, who worked in Jerusalem in 1898-1946. He also collected photographs from the archives of the Palestinian centers in Ramallah and Beirut.Elias Sanbar, who was born in Haifa, published Les Palestinians in 2004 in France. The book comprises photographs from the early days of photography up to the beginning of the 21st century (1839-2002). His book is the most comprehensive study of Palestinian photography. It is based on photographs collected in archives in France and the foreign press agencies. Issam Nassar, born in Ramallah and currently living in the United States, published his book Different Snapshots: The History of Early Local Photography in Palestine, 1850-1948 in Arabic in 2005. The pictures that appear in the book are mainly family and studio photographs. The most important book in Hebrew, written and edited by Dr. Rona Sela, which deals with early Palestinian photography, Photography in Palestine/Eretz Israel in the 1930s and 1940s, was published in 2000. Based on studies carried out so far, we can compile a list of well-known Palestinian photographers and studios: First came the Armenians; Yessayi Garabedian founded a photography studio in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1859, Garabed Krikorian began photographing in 1865, Josef Toumayan, Haladijan and Kvorek were students in the studio or worked as photographer assistants and were among the first local photographers. Daoud Sabonji worked in Jaffa from 1892, Khalil Ra'ad began working in Jerusalem in 1897, Militad Savvides in 1898, Karima 'Abbud and Fadil Saba began working in the 1920s in Nazareth and the Galilee, Elia Kahvedjian, Hobnas Sahkalanyin, Magradizian, Hanna Safiyya, the Risas Studio, and 'Ali Za'arur began working in Jerusalem in the 1930s, Harant Nakashian began working in Gaza in the 1940s, and Garu Nalavidian in Jerusalem in the 1950s. Other early photographers were Muhammad Salih al Kayyali from Jaffa, the Alhambra Studio, The Roxy Studio, Khalil Qaddura, Photo Boudayr in Ramallah, the Sam'aan Brothers, The Shamiyya Brothers, Photo Basil, the Mikel Studio in Bethlehem, the Shahrur Studio in Nablus, the El Rashid Studio in Tulkarem, and the El-Aharam Studio in Jenin. At the time the main studios were Bonfils (1867-1894) in Beirut and the American Colony in Jerusalem (1898-1946). As of the 1980s Arab press and art photographers have been increasingly active. Some studied in art academies in Israel while others work in international press agencies. Among them are Khalid Zigari, Rula Halwani, Ahlam Shibli, Nawal Jabbor, Sami Bukhari, Amar Diabas, Ra'id Bouyeir, Ra'ida Sa'ada, etc., and the installation and video artists Anisa Ashkar, Ra'ida Adon, Sharif Waked, etc. One can count on the fingers of one hand the number of photography exhibitions curated by Jewish curators that exhibited Arab-Palestinian photography in museums or galleries in Israel. A few small historical photographic exhibitions were held in the Arab community in Israel. This may also be a result of the lack of awareness to the importance ofthe Palestinian heritage and the means for preserving it. The border extended at the end of the war of 1948 separated large areas and one day the Palestinian population found itself on two sides of the Green Line. Doubtlessly the dispersion of a large population together with the trauma of the Nakba created feelings of apprehension and anxiety. There are professional problems in addition to emotional ones: a lack of a culture of preservation and the difficulty of studying and training photographers and photography curators. As a result, the study of Arab photography is still in its early stages. And thus I set off on this project together with a team assembled for the Umm el-Fahem’s art gallery project. We were fully aware of the fact that its site, Wadi Ara, was hardly photographed in the romantic and Zionist Holy Land of 1839-1949, not by Western or Arab photographers and certainly not by Jewish photographers who primarily documented the Jewish yishuv [the Jewish settlement in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel] and the Zionist movement’s endeavor. I discovered that not only did the archives and Arab photographers fail to document the Wadi Ara region, but that most of the photographers from 1949 to the 1980s were Jews. Consequently, the complex history of the Arab in the Israeli space is seen from a Jewish perspective. Nevertheless, the project’s principal objective was to generate a visual database which would constitute the foundation of the nascent archives of the future museum in Umm el-Fahem. The Umm el-Nur project Umm el-Fahem is first mentioned in Arab history in 1265. Its inhabitants were coal burners who secured their living by burning wood and making charcoal. The woodpiles burned and this is the source of the name in Arabic which means ‘mother of coal’ or ‘the source of coal’. Since the name may have pejorative connotations in Arabic (“the source of black”), the inhabitants often call the village Umm el-Nur (‘the source of light”). Light and darkness are the basic components of photography. The article that accompanies the exhibition, which is mainly composed of black and white photographs, was given its name as a result of the contextual multiplicity that creates different shades of black and white in Israeli society, among them artistic/documentary contexts, and political contexts relating to Arab citizens and the Jewish state. Up until a year ago there was no photographic history of the Arab villages in the Wadi Ara (Nahal Iron) region or of its main city, Umm el-Fahem. In other words, the history was not maintained in an archive, was not presented in an exhibition, and was not collected in a book. A year ago I began working with the historian Dr. Mustafa Kabha, the director of the archive, under the initiative and patronage of the art gallery in Umm el-Fahem, on the most complex project I had ever worked on in my career as researcher and curator of local photography. Curating a photographic exhibition in a place like Wadi Ara, with no archive, means building the foundation for the first historical visual memory database of some one hundred thousand inhabitants. In addition, the work mandated an advertising campaign, which entailed attempts to convince the local inhabitants to contribute their own visual material possession to the exhibition and the archives, a complex feat in itself. The solid base which was built after the infrastructure was completed gives the inhabitants of Wadi Ara and the exhibition’s spectators a unique and primary view of the region’s past. The project was carried out by employing five main channels: Collecting photographs from people’s homes, locating photographs in archives in Israel, Great Britain and the United States, locating photographs from private photographers in Israel, locating television, cinema and video films, and a contemporary photographic project comprising both Jewish and Arab photographers. The Wadi Ara space is not situated on the main road of historical photography. From the early days of the photography of the Holy Land pilgrims in 1839 and until 1918 there were no photographic archives in the region. In other words, Wadi Ara was not on the route of the Christian holy places, nor was it the venue of any mythological, Biblical or New Testament stories, with the exception of Tel Megiddo (Armageddon in the New Testament). In addition, it did not have a main city or road that served as a convenient route. Moreover, the Jewish photographers in Zionist Palestine in the second half of the 20th century had no interest in documenting the Arab villages. The main theme of the photographic history of Wadi Ara revolves around the life of and the struggle between the Wadi’s inhabitants and the ruling power. The battle at Megiddo took place in 1918 in the midst of World War I. We found photographs from the area which document the outcome of the battle between the British and the Ottomans. We also found several photographs from the 1930s - characteristic of the period - of the Trans-Jordan legion, and Arab warriors who participated in the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 against the British. We also found surveys of villages and a few photographs in the village files of the Haganah dating from the 40s that document the armed Arab-Jewish struggle. There are also photographs that document the transfer of the Wadi’s villages to Israeli military rule in May 1949, the widening of the Wadi Ara road in 1975, Umm el-Fahem declared a city in 1984 and the visit of Rabbi Meir Kahana to the city in the same year, the events of October 2000, and violent conflicts in the following years alongside peace demonstrations throughout. Moreover, the lion share of the photographed history of Wadi Ara was documented by Jewish photographers, beginning with the military photographers, through press and artistic photographers. In most cases this was the work of professional photographers who submitted good documentary photographs to newspaper reports. We did not find local Arab photographers who worked outside their studios in the Wadi Ara region in the early years as was customary among the Jewish sector at the time. Professional photographers began working in the area at the end of the 1970s, and their majority photographed stills and videos for documentary purposes. Most of the photographs in the exhibition taken by Arab photographers prior to this documentary project were taken at random. In the contemporary photographic project emphasis was placed on an artistic perception which also includes the documentary facet. Awareness to preservation of photographic material in Wadi Ara is meager and therefore the majority of the photographic inventory is not catalogued and is difficult to locate and view. In addition, there are photographs that were found in family albums and schools. Most of the early studio photographs as of the 1920s come from Jenin, Tulkarem and Hadera. Place, Memory – the Photographic History of Wadi Ara, 1903-2008 The exhibition opens with a photograph of charcoal preparation in the woodpiles of the Yabed village beyond the Green Line, where the charcoal makers of Umm el-Fahem and Wadi Ara wandered. This photograph is followed by the road signs to all the villages in the Wadi on Road 65. The photographs in the exhibition and the book are presented both thematically and chronologically. Walking through the gallery the spectators will feel they are meandering along the twisting paths of Wadi Ara, along the time route of the stories that took place there in 1903-2008. Two aerial photographs open the main inner space; one is a black and white photograph from 1944 in which Umm el-Fahem is seen when its inhabitants numbered some 2,500 people. The second is a color photograph of the city from 2007 when its inhabitants numbered some 45,000 people. Following is an aerial panorama from 1944, showing Wadi Ara. Photographs were found from the 1918 battle of Mediggo in World War I when the British army defeated the Turkish army in a battle which put an end to the Ottoman Rule in Palestine. The earliest photographs which have been found so far are from the archeological excavations in Tell Megiddo from 1903-1905 and 1925-1939 in which inhabitants of the region are seen working in the excavation and in the fields. Next to these are photographs that depict rural life of the 20s and of the years of the Arab Revolt in 1936-1939 until 1948. Not all of these photographs are of Wadi Ara; they were included in the exhibition in order to show characteristics of the Arab population in Palestine in the first half of the 20th century. Numerous photographs were found in the archives of the kibbutzim of the Megiddo-Ramot Menasheh (Blad el Ruha) region, some of which settled on the lands of the depopulated villages, mainly in the 30s. The villages were Al-Lajjun, Abu Shusha, Abu Zurayq, al-Kafrayn, Ju'ara, Daliyat al-Ruha, Umm al Dufuf, and Qannir. Film excerpts of the period are screened next to the photographs; they show the lifestyle, life in the British army, and Arabs fighters engaged in military drills. The photographs in this section are by the photographers of the British army and air force, the American Colony, Khalil Raad, Shlomo Narinsky, Photo Rubens, Zoltan Kluger, Yoel Lotan and anonymous photographers. Next are photographs of the entrance of the IDF forces to the Wadi Ara villages in May 1949. They show the ceremony of the signing of the handover documents, the village buildings and its inhabitants waving makeshift Israeli flags on the building rooftops; photographic series commissioned for articles in “Ha’aretz”, “Davar,” and “Ba’machaneh” showing the agricultural and commercial life in Wadi Ara; photographs from different stages of the widening of Road No. 65 in 1959, 1963 and 1975; the first color photographs from 1962 showing most of the Wadi’s villages, and a film that documents the wedding of Abu Rushdi in Umm el-Fahem in 1952. The photographs in this section are by Beno Rutenberg, the La’a’m photographers, David Ulmer, Maxim Solomon, Azaryah Alon and Mahmoud Yunis. The main space houses photographs documenting the Solel Boneh building of the housing projects by in 1967, local life in the 70s, the visit of Rabbi Meir Kahana in 1984, a series of contemporary photographs, among them a series of the wadi’s mosques, the depopulated villages, the Green Line, the road blockades and the separation fence, panoramas of the wadi in color, a presentation that shows people in the morning traffic jams, a series on factories and photographs of roadside fruits stands. A film of the visit of Rabbi Meir Kahana taken from inside the village by Studio Anan is also screened. The photographs in this section are by Amiran Arev, the La’am photographers, Micha Bar-Am, Anat Saragusti, Michal Heiman, Micky Kretzman, Hazam Bader, Ahlam Basul, Majdi Hadid, Zachi Ostrovsky, Susanna Lauterbach, Yoav Levi, Varda Sam-Pollack, Noa Ben-Shalom, Gilad Ofir, Asaf Evron, Mati Halili, Mahmoud Agabariya, Walid Abu Shakra and Studio Anan. Sports photographs appear in the first inner space. This series documents Israel’s boxing champion, Amar Agbariya, who is a local resident and the Umm el-Fahem soccer teams as of the 1980s. In this space there are also video films which show soccer games on the local pitch as of the 80s. The photographs in this section are by Asaf Evron, Varda Sam-Pollack, and Studio Anan.