Hanna Safieh

Hanna Safieh (1910 - 1979) 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."

External links

* http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/2000/jqf7/nassar.html