Marseille Exhibition Showcases Kegham Djeghalian Sr’s Gaza Photos From 1940s to 1970s
Key Takeaways
- Kegham Djeghalian Sr photographed Gaza life in the mid-20th century.
- Vintage photos show Gaza's happier pre-war life across decades.
- Exhibition highlights past Gaza life versus present devastation.
Joyful Gaza, archived
An exhibition in Marseille is showcasing 300 photos taken in Gaza between the 1940s and the 1970s, featuring the work of Kegham Djeghalian Sr, who opened Gaza’s first photo studio in 1944.
“Toggle Play Decades-old photos show ‘joyful’ Gaza in happier times”
Al-Monitor says Djeghalian survived the Armenian genocide of 1915, then settled in Gaza and spent four decades capturing images of Palestinian society up until his death in 1981.
Al-Monitor quotes his grandson, who curated a show of his work in France’s southern city of Marseille, saying, "It's a Gaza we no longer know. A joyful Gaza, one full of hope, connected to the world, with trains and an airport,".
The Al-Monitor account describes the archives as "interrupted and unfinished" and says the exhibition titled "Photo Kegham of Gaza: Unboxing" is to travel to Bristol in the United Kingdom in October.
Curator’s context and loss
Al-Monitor reports that Kegham Jr, a 41-year-old professor of visual culture, said he did not want any captions or context to the pictures in the exhibition titled "Photo Kegham of Gaza: Unboxing".
In Al-Monitor’s description of the archive, Kegham Jr said his father discovered over 1,000 photo negatives "by chance" in 2018 in three red boxes at the back of a cupboard in the family's Cairo apartment.
Al-Monitor says the collaboration behind the exhibition was interrupted when, in October 2023, Israeli strikes killed Tarazi, his wife and grandchild, and Kegham Jr reached out to a Palestinian called Marwan al-Tarazi to complete his photo collections.
The Al-Monitor account also says Kegham Jr was unable to visit Gaza, with the territory under blockade since Hamas seized control in 2007, and then a devastating war ravaging the territory after the Palestinian Islamist militant group attacked Israel in October 2023.
What visitors feel
Al-Monitor quotes Varjabedian saying, "It's a bit terrible given the current events," as she described seeing "those wonderful palm trees, that beach" in the photographs.
Al Jazeera frames the same exhibition as showing a "joyful" Gaza in happier times, noting that the photos were taken in Gaza between the 1940s and the 1970s.
Al-Monitor adds that in one image children have clambered onto each other to form a human pyramid in the courtyard of a school for Palestinian refugees displaced after the creation of Israel, while another shows women with voluminous hair blowouts posing smiling next to a sewing machine.
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