29 March 2013

BEIRUT: Born in what is now Lebanon in 1854, Khalil Raad moved to Palestine as a young child, remaining there until his death, at the age of 103. During his centurylong life, Raad witnessed sweeping changes in his homeland.

He lived through the transition from Ottoman suzerainty to British mandate control, the first wave of Zionist immigration, the 1936-39 uprising against the mandate, independence and, immediately in its wake, the Nakba of 1948. Raad happened to be a professional photographer, and his work bears silent testament to Palestine’s turbulent history.

The pioneers of photography in this region happened to be Armenian. Raad is thought to have been Palestine’s first professional Arab photographer and he was prolific. He shot a variety of subjects – rolling landscapes, public events, street scenes and commissioned portraits; posed nativity scenes targeting souvenir-seeking travelers to the region, and those in search of the “exotic orient.”

In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the Institute for Palestine Studies has organized an exhibition of a selection of Raad’s photographs, culled from among the 3,000 black-and-white glass and gelatin negatives in its collection, which date from the late 19th century to just before the 1948 war.

Curated by Ramallah-based artist Vera Tamari, “Palestine Before 1948: Not Just Memory” is divided into four categories, “Staged Reality and Biblical Inspiration,” “Jerusalem,” “Everyday Palestine” and “Raad’s Studio.”

Tamari selected the photographs from the IPS collection with the help of Issam Nassar, an art historian specializing in early photography in Palestine. “A lot of these images reflected the style of photography that was in fashion at the time,” says Tamari, “made for the purpose of selling to tourists and visitors and people who were coming to the Holy Land.”

“We could feel that he had this approach,” she says, “that he wanted to photograph in order to be able to sell and promote the Holy Land in a very specific stereotypical way, making it seem like the Biblical land, a land without people – staged people in the landscape, the staged people in the nativity scene. ... That was one angle, then we saw that there was the other angle, which was daily life and daily Palestine.”

The exhibition opens with a rectangular light box, running the length of one wall, in which Tamari and Nasser’s initial selection of 600 photos is displayed. A glimpse into Raad’s diverse oeuvre, this selection includes everything from families posing in traditional clothing, covered with mirrors and delicate embroidery, to landscapes, crowd scenes in the souk and outside a mosque.

In order to uphold the authenticity and historical value of Raad’s work, Tamari decided to have the photographs reproduced manually from the negatives, rather than scanning them. In this she enlisted the aid of Agop Kanledjian, a Beirut-based photographer who is one of few still able to print photographs the old-fashioned way.

The bulk of the exhibition is comprised of 75 enlarged copies from among the initial selection of 600 photographs. These are divided into formal portraits, vignettes of everyday urban and rural life, and staged settings – lone riders on horseback, dressed in traditional garb, survey the landscape as though discovering it for the first time; couples playing Mary and Joseph stand magnanimously as kneeling shepherds present them with gifts.

To source the portraits, Tamari had to search outside the IPS archive, borrowing photographs from private collections. “There was very little representation in the IPS catalogue of middle class people,” she explains. “People who were cultured or educated or business people ... I knew Raad had also done some fantastic studio photographs, so I thought that I would make this extra effort to look for these images.”

The reaction to Raad’s photographs has transcended even the curator’s intentions, causing her to rethink her own perspective.

“When I was working on this exhibition I thought very seriously that I don’t want an exhibition that just raises nostalgia,” she admits. “When I saw a video of the opening and I saw how people commented, it was just so important for them to look at these scenes again – especially the Palestinians who had left when they were very young, those who are living in Beirut – and I could tell that there was a sense of nostalgia that we cannot escape.

“We should accept it,” she continues. “It’s a land that we lost and we’re pining for our return to our homeland and we’re pining for our memory, or the memories of my parents or grandparents, and we shouldn’t shy away from the nostalgia.”

Raad’s photographs capture an idyllic side of pre-1948 Palestine – swathes of landscape fast disappearing beneath concrete, fishermen unloading their catches from simple wooden boats, families harvesting fruit, important personages of the day posing solemnly in their smartest clothes, sporting then-stylish tarabeesh.

They also capture a darker side – British soldiers and policemen stop and search Palestinian civilians in Jerusalem, frisking them in the street.

Already a wonderful exhibition, “Palestine Before 1948” is augmented by Tamari’s decision to include artworks by artists and writers working today. These figures interact with Raad’s photos to create new pieces – a dialogue between contemporary and historic readings of Palestine.

Most revealing about how today’s views of Palestine contrast and coexist with those of the past is “Village R-1141,” a sketch book by Yazid Anani. The Palestinian lecturer and curator took one of Raad’s photos, capturing an unknown village, a small hamlet of traditional stone houses, and cut out sections of it, placing them haphazardly onto each white page of the book.

He then invited other artists to work over and around these fragments of a lost village – painting or drawing whatever they want adjacent to the fractured buildings.

Some artists have chosen to complete the village in keeping with traditional style, maintaining its status as something existing in the past. Others have imposed jarring images from contemporary life onto the village, simultaneously bringing it forward into the present and emphasizing that it is no longer compatible with the modern world.

Tamari is planning to take the exhibition on tour, believing that it is crucial that Raad’s images are seen and interpreted by people across a range of cultures, from the Emirates to Europe to the U.S.

While history and art, rather than politics, may appear to be the focus of “Palestine Before 1948,” Tamari believes the three cannot be divorced.

“I think the political issue of occupation and loss is very important,” she says, “to keep reminding people that this land was not an empty land. This land had people living in it. It had its rituals. It had its beauty. It had everything. ... It’s a good way of reminding people that Palestine was not empty, as Golda Meir once claimed.’”

“Palestine Before 1948: Not Just Memory,” curated by Vera Tamari, is up at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Clemenceau until April 14. For more information go to www.palestine-studies.org.

Copyright The Daily Star 2013.