Hanna Safieh
Encyclopedia
Hanna Safieh was a Palestinian
photographer
.
His pictures illustrate numerous history books about "The most turbulent period of Palestinian history in this century" as Salim Tamari
calls it in his forward. Yet, Hanna Safieh's legacy remained dispersed until his son, Raffi Safieh, decided to select some of his most important photographs to be published in a book dedicated to his memory. Ninety five photo-graphs depicting life in Palestine in the nineteen thirties, forties and fifties, including portraits, historical events, religious ceremonies, landscapes, and folkloric traditions, all are beautifully recorded in these exquisite black and white chronicles of history.
"Born to a Palestinian Arab family from Jerusalem in 1910, Hanna Safieh was one of the early local photographers of Palestine. Born during the time when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire, he subsequently saw it fall under British rule, Jordanian rule, and Israeli occupation. In the context of local Arab photography in Palestine, Safieh is a unique and pioneering figure." What set him apart from his contemporaries who focussed on portraits and traditional wedding pictures was that Safieh worked on what could be called "landscape and ethnographic photography." As Issam Nassar states in his introduction, this book offers us "a unique opportunity to get to know the work of an important artist, to honor his memory, and to celebrate his work."
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
photographer
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
.
His pictures illustrate numerous history books about "The most turbulent period of Palestinian history in this century" as Salim Tamari
Salim Tamari
Salim Tamari is the director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies and is an associate professor of sociology at Birzeit University, near Ramallah in the West Bank. Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, has called Tamari "the preeminent Palestinian historical...
calls it in his forward. Yet, Hanna Safieh's legacy remained dispersed until his son, Raffi Safieh, decided to select some of his most important photographs to be published in a book dedicated to his memory. Ninety five photo-graphs depicting life in Palestine in the nineteen thirties, forties and fifties, including portraits, historical events, religious ceremonies, landscapes, and folkloric traditions, all are beautifully recorded in these exquisite black and white chronicles of history.
"Born to a Palestinian Arab family from Jerusalem in 1910, Hanna Safieh was one of the early local photographers of Palestine. Born during the time when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire, he subsequently saw it fall under British rule, Jordanian rule, and Israeli occupation. In the context of local Arab photography in Palestine, Safieh is a unique and pioneering figure." What set him apart from his contemporaries who focussed on portraits and traditional wedding pictures was that Safieh worked on what could be called "landscape and ethnographic photography." As Issam Nassar states in his introduction, this book offers us "a unique opportunity to get to know the work of an important artist, to honor his memory, and to celebrate his work."
External links
- http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/2000/jqf7/nassar.html