Photography has accompanied the Palestinian people throughout their exile. Randa Shaath searches Lebanon for portraits of the past I arrived in Tyr around noon. We drove along the old port and into the Christian quarter. The sun was very bright and the sea completely calm. Fishing boats were moored all along the dock, and most of the fishermen seemed to be drinking tea and playing backgammon in their coffee shop by the sea. Next to the port, I noticed a beautiful old stone house right beside the lighthouse. It looked as though it had been recently renovated. Outside was a sign that said "rooms for rent". I decided right away that this was where I must stay. My room had two old beds, a cupboard, and two huge wooden windows facing the door. With the windows open, the sleepy waves furnished the soundtrack for my short visit. It was here that I began my quest for documents from the visual history of Palestine. I had been sent to Tyr by the Arab Image Foundation, which was established in Beirut in 1997 to locate, collect, preserve, interpret, and present photographic works from the Middle East and North Africa from the early 19th century to the present. My specific mission was to search for old photos and negatives in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. I wanted to locate and acquire part of our missing visual memory, to help document the 54 years of the Palestinian people's life in transit. I set to work immediately in Tyr itself. My first call was at the studio Al-Jaleel, run by Mustafa Darwish and his daughter Nana. Mustafa is over 60. He has raised four sons -- all of them university educated -- and a daughter with the money he has made from the studio. One son lives in Germany, another has opened his own photographic studio in Beirut, and a third runs the family's original studio in Al-Buss camp in Tyr. Nana works with her father since completing her high school education. Her interest in photography developed early. Recently, she has started using the software program PhotoShop for creative portraits. Mustafa has worked as a photographer since the early 1960s. In his studio, he does portrait work. His subjects included the Fedayeen (freedom fighters) who would risk their lives every time they went on operations. He also documented the life of Palestinian refugees in the southern camps before and during the Lebanese war, and portrayed life in Tyr under Israeli occupation. As I explained the purpose of my mission, he turned his face in sorrow. "Before the Israelis invaded the South, I threw everything into the sea. I did not want to harm any of those I photographed." Not a single record survives of his earlier work. "We live in the South, this is where the enemy reached first, I had to protect my clients." I took the opportunity and asked Nana to do my portrait. "You do not have make up on. Do not worry though! I will fix you up later with PhotoShop," she told me, brightly. When I got the photo, I was astonished at the outcome. Thanks to her machine, she had changed my appearance utterly. The computer's power far outstrips whatever previous generations of photographers could have done by hand. I had heard of an elderly Lebanese photographer, Mustafa Al-Turjuman, originally from Sidon, who had lived in Tyr for most of his professional life. His studio, Ramsis, was the first to be established in the town in the early 1950s, and is still working today. When I called on him, he was delivering passport photos to a young client. Huge black and white images of the city decorated the walls, along with a gold-framed certificate of excellence. I showed him the brochures and books the Foundation has produced on different photographic archives. He shook his head. "There is nothing left here. During the Israeli invasion, soldiers occupied the studio. They knew nothing about the profession, they spilled water and chemicals all over the negatives. They are all ruined." Images of the destruction of the Palestinian Research Centre in Beirut kept flashing through my mind. When they invaded Lebanon in 1982, the Israeli army had stripped the centre of every last document. The soldiers took each piece, wrapped them in ropes, and rolled them down the balconies, one by one, carefully to their tanks. The process took three days. Everything was stolen and the building destroyed. There was one more studio left to visit in Tyr: Studio Darwish. It is no longer a working studio, as Darwish Al-Hajj himself died a few years ago. His son Mohamed, a freelance print journalist, has taken over the premises, and uses it as his office. Mohamed claimed to have all his father's negatives and prints. It seemed as if I had struck gold at last. "He started in 1953. He was taking photos in the camp even before he opened his studio. He documented every element of daily life. Later, he became a professional in hand painting and colouring photos, he did marvelous portraits." Mohamed glowed with pride. "In the 1960s, he was interested in 8mm films as well. He documented events in the Tyr area, but he also made short feature films. All six of his children, we all played roles in these films. He wrote the script and directed. They were shown in public spaces, coffee shops, during the feasts. People paid to watch them." He said he was willing to give the Foundation access, and asked me to come back in a few days, as he needed time to look through the archives and prepare them for an outsider's eye. I was in Beirut when Mohamed called me. He gave me a day and a time for my appointment. I returned to Tyr full of anticipation, imagining the treasure I would soon be holding in my hands, the smell of the old photographs. Mohamed began by regaling me with strange stories about himself, his writing, and the city. He repeatedly promised that he would show me the photographs "tomorrow". Meanwhile, I was his captive audience. He even locked me inside the studio once, while he went out to the post office. But he never produced the photos he had promised. It was as if his hold on his father's collection gave him something precious with which to bargain for attention. Yet he did not want to share them, much less let them out of his grasp. I stayed there for three days, without seeing a single photograph. Then I left, empty-handed. I had drawn a blank in the South. The documents that might have composed its visual memory were inexistent, or inaccessible. I decided then to try the camps in the North, which were farther away from the Israeli military, and had not been under Israeli occupation. I was referred to the studio Qayess in Biddawi camp. On arriving, I asked a young man for directions. He told me the studio was near the Qiyada Amma (general command) check point, on Mankubeen street -- the street of the afflicted. Immediately, he offered to accompany me there. When we arrived, 10 teenage girls were waiting impatiently to have their portraits taken. They were happy and excited, sharing their make-up kits and trying out all the costumes in the studio. Mohamed Qayess excused himself: he had to go on with his business. When he was done, I explained my quest to him. He told me that he had learnt photography from his uncle. "My uncle was a great photographer. We had a very successful studio in Tal Al-Zaatar camp in Beirut. Look at this portrait, this was when he was teaching me how to do hand colouring." Mohamed said they documented celebrations in the camp, as well as doing studio portraits. "All this was before Al-Zaatar fell. Then, I moved to Biddawi." He agreed to show me his work, and invited me downstairs. We entered an open basement, which served for raising chicken, as well as a storeroom for all Mohamed's negatives. Dozens of boxes of passport photo negatives lay around neglected in the dust. They dated back to the late 1980s, in Biddawi camp. We moved the boxes back up to the studio and started looking through them. I asked him again if he was sure there were no traces of his earlier work? Had he ever tried to go back to the studio in Tal Al-Zaatar? He was silent for a moment, before starting on his story. "For 55 days, the camp was under siege, More than two thousand people were killed in the tunnels they dug to hide in. If the heavy bombardment didn't get them, they died of thirst and hunger. Finally, we surrendered. Some managed to survive the war. No Palestinians were allowed back in, and we were afraid to go searching for our belongings. My uncle and myself wanted our cameras, machines and negatives back. My aunt is Lebanese, so we thought it would be better if she went for them. They would allow her in, and she could check the damage and carry out as much as possible. At the very least, she would be able to bring back photos and negatives. She took her ID and some plastic bags and left. That was the last time we saw her. She never came back." The drive from Biddawi camp to Nahr Al-Bared camp to the north took 20 minutes. It was not enough time to untie the knot in my stomach after I had heard Qayess's story. Studio Badr is located in the main street of the camp. Recently, they have renamed it Jenin street. In all four of the camps I have visited in Lebanon, refugees have named a street or a square after Jenin. Munir Badr, the photographer, welcomed me with a frown. He was watching the news. "Palestine seems farther and farther away." He asked me about President Bush's speech and what it meant. His conclusion was that by imposing extreme preconditions, the American government was making it more and more difficult to even start negotiations. He asked me if I thought there was a better, secret agreement which we might not know about. I shook my head in doubt. If there was a secret agreement, it would not be better. He had a huge box of negatives at his side. "I have kept all the passport photo negatives. People still come and ask for reproductions. I make some extra money that way. I threw everything else away. I live in a very small house and I have five children, my mother, and two sisters living with me. There is no space for any extras. No one comes to ask anymore for their old wedding or birthday photos. I threw them away to make room for my family." Once again, I had to leave empty-handed. I had an appointment at Al-Najdeh Centre, an NGO that provides various services to camp residents, including one which was of particular interest to me: photo and video workshops for teenagers. Fathiya, who is responsible for these activities, welcomed me with a huge pot of coffee. In despair, I told her about my fruitless search for old photographs. She immediately offered to show me "her treasure". It was obvious that I was the first person who had ever asked her about such a treasure. She sent her sister back to the house to bring the family photos, and meanwhile offered to take me on a tour around the camp. Sewage water was leaking through the narrow alleys, where garbage had been unceremoniously dumped. The houses were so close to each other that the sun was hardly able to enter any of them. Two women sat in the doorway of a tiny room which made up their entire house, mending old clothes. Fathiya showed me where the refugees relocated from other camps lived. We visited the area where the refugees who came there from Tal Al-Zaatar live today. Al-Zaatar was completely destroyed by the Phalanges in 1976. Three children stopped playing and followed me, insisting that I photograph them. "We are the muhajjarreen (displaced)." I asked them where they had been displaced from, but they simply answered: "From here." "Where were you born?" I insisted. "Here." "But where are you displaced from then? Where are you from?" "From Palestine," they answered. Then they left me and wandered off to continue their games. When we got back from our tour round the camp, Fathiya's sister Rima had returned. Rima told me that many families in her neighbourhood still had their old family photos, and were willing to show them to me. She had brought an old, torn brown envelope of photos with her. Fathiya told me she had 21 photos. Before she began to show me them, she counted them carefully. "This is my father as a groom in front of the tent. My parents got married in the camp. It was all tents at the time. Look how elegant he looks! To this day, though he is in his 70's, he likes to dress well. Girls still admire him! This is my mother and aunts having a picnic in the fields near the camp. More and more houses are being built; these fields do not exist anymore. This one was taken in Syria. My father and uncle used to go there often." The photos were in good shape. Fathiya counted them again before returning them to the envelope. They were small prints in black and white. Most of them were from the 1950s, apart from two photos dated 1938. These were of the grandparents. They were taken in Palestine, before their Diaspora began. Wearing traditional Palestinian dress, the couple posed proudly in front of a stone house in Safad, the town where they came from. In his wedding day portrait, Fathiya's father wore a slick suit and smiled, even though he was posing in front of his refugee tent. The women in the picnic photo wore black modern dresses. They lay on a rug, surrounded by fields as far as the eye could see. They were smiling, too. I wondered what they were hoping for, what their dreams had been. Were they more optimistic about their return than today's generation of Palestinians? As I expected, Fathiya would not give away her treasure. She had lost her country, her house, her chance of living anywhere as an equal, active citizen. She was not going to lose these precious documents that bore witness to another life. Instead, I suggested that next time I visit, I should bring a scanner with me and scan all the camp's family treasures. During my trips to Biddawi and Nahr Al-Bared, every one I met had mentioned a studio in Tripoli where they all went to be photographed before there were any studios in the camp itself. They also told me that its owner, Joseph the Armenian, used to tour the camps seeking out anyone who needed to be photographed. Many were too poor or too old to travel to the city, but they still needed ID photos. Joseph, I was told, had a white bed sheet which served as a backdrop, and people would line up for him to photograph them. No one knew if he was still alive and working. I decided to find out. I went to Tall square in Tripoli, where I had been told he had his studio. The clock tower on the square resembles the one in the main square in Jaffa. The buildings are filled with echoes of old Islamic architecture, and there are many sweet shops. A street barber was going about his business, while a group of men stood round a television set on one corner. I asked at least six people if they knew where Studio Joseph was located. The building did not look directly onto the square, but stood on a corner down a narrow side street. I entered a tiny dark room with one ancient wooden desk and a cabinet of wooden drawers. In his late 80's now, Joseph Avedissian sat alone behind them. He was surrounded by dozens of black and white portraits, hanging on the wall, sandwiched under the glass plate on his desk. I introduced myself and explained my research project. I asked him if he still had his early negatives or prints. "I have been working since 1945, even before I opened my own studio in 1954. I did go to the camps to make photos. If you want to look at them, you will need patience and time. Up in my attic there are half a million negatives." By a shaky wooden ladder I ascended into the attic. The smell of photographic chemicals filled the small, dark space, which served Joseph as both lab and storage area. There I saw hundreds of boxes of all different sizes, containing his life's work. Many had been destroyed permanently by the humidity. Countless negatives were stuck to one another, irreparably damaged. But some had survived, to bear witness to a lost era. In addition to portraits of Tripoli families, school graduations, weddings and funerals, I found some negatives of portraits of the 1970s' Fedayeen in full military regalia. Their appearance was totally different from the images of suicide bombers you can see today posted on the walls of towns in Gaza and the West Bank. These freedom fighters seemed proud to be photographed. They had dreams. They were struggling for a better life here on earth. They smiled out from underneath their long charming locks of hair -- the Che hippie look -- their smiles so different from the desperate, defiant, joyless intensity of those whose only plan for the future is to martyr themselves in two hours' time. Joseph has only two daughters, and they live abroad. None of his relatives intend to carry on his profession. He agreed to sell some of his negatives. He was happy to know they would be preserved by the Foundation, for others to see and use. When the Israeli army re-occupied areas of the West bank two months ago, placing a number of cities under military siege, they invaded homes, schools and offices. They looted documents, and stole computers, birth certificates and graduation diplomas. For many years now have they been trying to erase our collective memory and destroy the signs of our everyday existence. As I left Tripoli at the end of my stay, I wondered where they could take all these captured things to, which can be of no possible use or interest to them -- the souvenirs, the records, the traces of our past. I imagined them dumped, unceremoniously, in a huge pile, in the midst of some barren no-man's land. Perhaps, in a few years time, I will find myself going to Palestine on a new quest, to search for the landfill of our people's memory.
