Dor Guez presents scanograms based on materials taken from the CPA (Christian Palestinian Archive), dedicated to this community scattered across the Middle East. Guez himself founded the archive in 2009, and it currently holds thousands of photographs and documents from the first half of the 20th century, having begun as a single suitcase found under the bed of Guez’s grandparents bed.
The Christian Palestinian community is a minority within a minority, straddling both East and West. Its sons and daughters comprise a tiny population within Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The various archive photos draw one’s thoughts to an alternative view of identity, history, memory and loss between the Jordan River and the sea. Guez uses the archival structure, one that categorizes information, but unlike the ideological sorting of most archives, Guez’s does not focus on the preservation of physical materials, and the original shots are returned to their owners after being scanned and filed. This system of preservation, storage and distribution created by the artist has no set territory. It is not a national archive, and never will be. Its function is subversive, its delicate and elusive nature allows it to undermine the historical narratives of institutional archives, while affirming and defining a community.
Guez exposes hidden images, like memories erupting momentarily into consciousness. His scanograms are made of photos scanned using three different scanners and merged into a single image. While each of the scanners automatically corrects flaws, enhancing and altering, the combined result brings them to the fore again, providing a processed and digitalized image that still retains its historic character.
The two scanograms in the exhibition are taken from the first series compiled by Guez for his archive. This series tells the story of Samira, whose family lived in Jaffa until 1948, and then evicted to ghetto Lod, encompassing a period of two decades (1938-1958).
Here we met Samira on her wedding day in “ghetto Lod”, a year after her family’s exile from Jaffa. In one scene, Samira stands center stage, dressed in stark white that clearly distinguishes her from the rest. Her face is veiled, but her gaze stares directly into the camera lens. She is surrounded by her maids of honor and family, all dressed in their very best. All are aware of the significance of the event to unfold – the first wedding to be held after the conquest of Jaffa and exile of its Christian community to Lod. The wedding photos of Samira and Yaakov had been stored away for decades, wrapped in plastic, hidden away in a suitcase under a bed. The family memories became articles of evidence, a testimony to life in the Lod ghetto after 1948.