Thobe: Symbol of the Palestinian identity and culture

photo:Fatima Abbadi
Tiraz: Widad Kawar Home for Arab Dress

Thobe stands for dress and Tatreez, or embroidery on the thobe, is a Palestinian tradition deeply rooted in the history and culture of Palestine. It is a form of art and a language of expression. If we study the symbols and patterns of each area of Palestine, we can witness the connection of the Palestinian people to their land. Tatreez depicts not only the surrounding nature but also rites of passages and historical events.

Before the events of 1948, traditional costume for village women in Palestine was regionally and stylistically diverse, with great emphasis placed on ornamentation. Designed from the finest of fabrics, both locally woven and imported, Palestinian costume was traditionally embroidered and appliqued, each garment

becoming an individual work of art. Women's costume also contained an intricate communication system expressing the wearer's status, wealth and geographic origin by means of their style and decorative elements. Embroidery played an important part in village life, and was thought to reveal a woman's character and personality as well as reflecting her economic status. Embroidery colour preference was primarily linked to regional identity, with Palestinian embroidery possessing a complex colour language. The main embroidery stitches used were cross stitch and couching, worked with floss silk. Each embroidery pattern was named, with geometric and abstract designs being supplemented by curvilinear and representational motifs introduced by European missionaries and educationalists after the 1930s. Embroidery motifs also reflected the political environment of the time. For example, the Pasha's Tent pattern first appeared at the time when the region was ruled from the Ottoman Court, while the Officer's Pips pattern was adopted during the British Mandate, imitating British military symbols of rank. Thus embroidery acted as a symbol of evolving Palestinian identity by historically recording individual interpretations of the political and cultural events that touched the lives of Palestinian village women.
complete reading:
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1499&context=tsaconf

photo: Fatima Abbadi
Tiraz: Widad Kawar Home for Arab Dress

"Threads of Identity" by Widad Kawar is one of the most fascinating books and records of the Palestinian heritage through costumes and fabrics. Widad Kawar spent more than 50 years researching, collecting and preserving part of the heritage of Palestine. She has made it her passion to combine her love for textiles and Palestinian heritage into one, creating the largest collection of Arab heritage collected from different countries around the region, but mainly Palestine, and her current residence Jordan. Through her collection she explains the depth and history of each piece. In 2012 Widad Kawar received the prestigious Prince Claus Award for her valuable contribution, passion and commitment in rescuing and preserving Palestinian, Jordanian and wider Arab cultural heritage. 

link:
http://www.princeclausfund.org/en/news/presentation-of-2012-prince-claus-award-to-widad-kawar.html

See a video preview about the book:


Widad Kawar interview:

Per-Olow Anderson: “A photographer who belonged to the world”

The Swedish photographer Per Olow Anderson (1921-1989) was the first in the world to tell the story about the Palestinian refugees in Gaza in a photographic book. 

In 1956 the people of Gaza had been living as refugees for eight years in the 41 km long strip. During this year they were visited twice by the Swedish photographer Per-Olow Anderson who, deeply touched by what he witnessed, started photographing. In the 50’s few were aware of the fate of the Palestinian people, even less knew about the Palestinian refugee camps that dotted the Middle East after the establishment of the State of Israel. Per-Olow Anderson didn’t just become the first photographer to cover the Palestinian refugees in Gaza, he also was the first journalist who used his camera to truly SEE the people who had lost their homes, properties and native country:

“I ask you simply to look at them. They will look back at you; and I believe that as you look into their eyes, you will, as I did, see yourself: They are human too….”

He wanted to draw the world’s attention to the situation in Gaza, and one year later he published this unique pictorial photographic book “They are human too… a photo essay on the Palestine Arab refugees”.

Takeyoshi Tanuma :‘Old’ and the ‘New' Japan

Takeyoshi Tanuma  is a renowned Japanese photographer. 

After graduating from the Tokyo Photographic College in 1949, he then joined the magazine Sun News Photos, where he met and apprenticed under Ihee Kimura.  In 1953, he began working as a contract photographer with the Shinchosha publishing house and became a contributor for several magazines, including Geijutsu Shincho, for which he took portraits of several major Japanese artists.  From 1965 to 1972, he became a stringer for Time Life.  In 1984 he accompanied the UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, the actress Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, around the world taking photographs of children in need. Children are central to Tanuma’s social documentary work as they are a “mirror reflecting their own society”. 

In 1995 he was offered a professorship at the Tokyo College of Photography and in the same year he became president of the Japan Professional Photographers’ Society (JPS). In 2004, a retrospective of his works, Human Symphony, was shown at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.

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La fotografía

“Los fotógrafos son como los antiguos navegantes, que descubrían tierras, gentes, cosas nunca vistas. Lo nunca visto, lo que se ve una vez y nunca volverá a verse, salvo a través del prisma sorprendido del artista. Esa es la materia, el arte de la fotogrfía.”

Photo: Fatima Abbadi

Nakba (The catastrophe) in pictures

More Reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba_Day

Marc Garanger: Femme Algerienne

Photo © Marc Garanger

Unlike the conflict in Vietnam, few photographic documents exist from the period of the Algerian War (1954 - 1962).  Algeria's War of Independence from France officially lasted almost a decade, but its genesis goes back to the early 40s. It was one the bloodiest struggles against a brutal colonial power with over a million Algerians killed, with thousands interned in concentration camps.

Marc Garanger’s Algerian Women is one of the few photographic essays dedicated to that painful period.

In 1960, Garanger, a 25-year-old draftee who had already been photographing professionally for ten years, landed in Kabylia, in the small village of Ain Terzine, about seventy-five miles south of Algiers. Like many politically engaged young men, he had put off his departure for the army as long as possible, hoping that the war would end without him. He was soon selected as his regiment’s photographer.

The women that Garanger portrayed came from neighboring villages. Either Berber or Muslim, they had never before come into contact with Europeans. When Garanger arrived, there was a detachment of armed men with machine guns across their shoulders, an interpreter, and the commander. The women would be lined up, then each in turn would sit on a stool outdoors, in front of the whitewashed wall of a house. Without their veils, their disheveled hair and their protective tattoos were exposed. Their lined faces reflected the harshness of their life. The stiffness of their pose and the intensity of their gaze evoke early daguerreotypes.

Photo © Marc Garanger

"In 1960, I was doing my military service in Algeria. The French army had decided that the indigenous peoples were to have a French identity card. I was asked to photograph all the people in the surrounding villages. I took photographs of nearly two thousand persons, the majority of whom were women, at a rate of about two hundred a day. The faces of the women moved me greatly. They had no choice. They were required to unveil themselves and let themselves be photographed. They had to sit on a stool, outdoors, before a white wall. I was struck by their pointblank stares, first witness to their mute, violent protest."

-Marc Garanger, Femmes algériennes 1960 (Anglet, France, 2002)

In the Middle East, the veil is like a second skin among traditional people. It may be taken off only within the secrecy of the walls, among women or between husband and wife, but never publicly. Garanger’s portraits symbolize the collision of two civilizations, Islamic and Western, and serve as an apt metaphor for colonization. The women’s defiant look may be thought of as an ‘evil eye’ that they cast to protect themselves and curse their enemies.

Photo © Marc Garanger

Fifty years after Algeria’s independence was proclaimed, Garanger’s contested portraits have not lost their strength. When he went back to Algeria in 2004 to meet those he had photographed, he found that the pictures he had taken were often the only ones that the women ever had of themselves, and they welcomed his return: he had become the keeper of their memory. 

Read more: women-unveiled-marc-garangers

Photo © Marc Garanger