Female Palestinian photographer Karimeh Abbud honored in new exhibit

Karimeh Abbud seems to have been quite a character.

She certainly appears to have ticked many of the de rigueur profile boxes considered by marketing and PR folk as a must if they are to grab significant media attention. As curator Guy Raz writes in the background notes to his exhibition “Karimeh Abbud – Sacred Souvenirs,” currently in progress at the Eretz Israel Museum (MUZA) in Ramat Aviv: “This is the first museum exhibition in Israel dedicated to the most important female Palestinian photographer who worked in this area in the early 20th century.”

Then again, considering the paucity of Arab women in the profession at that time, perhaps that isn’t much to shout about. It seems there was, in fact, only one other contemporary Palestinian in the field, a certain Khalil Raad – a man – who was active here between 1890 and 1948. Christian Arab Abbud’s professional timeline was quite a bit shorter, 1920-1940. There were also six Jewish photographers dotted around the country. In fact, as the exhibition clearly shows, rarity or no, Abbud’s work is well worth the museum space.

The show title relates to Abbud’s niche line of work, which, by all accounts, helped her keep the wolves at bay with ease. Although there is not much biographical data available, we do know that Abbud was born and died in Bethlehem. She was the daughter of a Lutheran priest who seems to have made a decent living from his ecclesiastical duties. He had enough spare cash to give his daughter a camera when she was just a lass, kick-starting what was to become a lifelong passion.

Amazingly, she also had a car in which she lugged her equipment around the region.

Mapping the exhibition

“That’s where the parents of Mary, Jesus’s mother, came from,” he advises. There may even have been an ulterior political motive. “Here you see a Palestinian village which no longer exists,” Raz adds.

Abbud’s religious beliefs and all-consuming desire to capture sacred sites and subjects of Christian religious interest is a leitmotif of her work from the start.

Even an ostensibly secular setting, such as a pair of fishermen going about their business in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, turns out to be an opportunity to fly the religious flag. The caption for the tranquil-looking snapshot reads: “Tiberias, fishermen by a fort marked with a cross to indicate the Chapel of Nicholas, patron saint of sailors.” It is also worth noting that the canonical gospels cite two miraculous catches of fish by apostles, after being encouraged by Jesus to cast their nets just one more time following a number of unsuccessful attempts.

The aforementioned map informs the logistics of the exhibition layout, which takes in around 120 mostly monochromic prints, apportioned according to the regions in which they were documented.

There are several churches, such as the Mount Carmel Monastery in Haifa and the Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem. However, Abbud produced some pretty impressive scenery shots, too. Tiberias – Sunrise on the Lake is a particularly stunning item in which she catches a small sailboat crossing a broad strip of sunlight reflected on the gently rippling waters of Sea of Galilee.

Female photographer

There is a telltale ad in the El-Carmel Arabic-language Haifa newspaper from March 1924. Abbud proffers herself to consumers under the curious epithet “Photographer of The Local Sun.” She gives her residence as Domet House, in Haifa, and describes herself as “the only local woman photographer in Palestine.” She says she “learned this fine art from a well-known photographer.”

“You see, she relates to herself as an artist,” Raz notes. She also has a head start on her male counterparts. She claims to have “specialized in work for women and families,” and says she accepts commissions from “women who prefer to be photographed in their own homes, any day except Sunday,” in deference to her religious observance.

The exhibition includes some portraits, mostly of figures who seem to be Muslims. Naturally, no Muslim woman of the day would have allowed a man to take their picture.

Abbud may not have been formally educated in the discipline, but she certainly had a keen eye for juicy subjects and a good grasp of compositional syntax. There is a charming shot of a bunch of children in Bethel, and a classic frame of “an elderly man smoking a nargileh in a rest area.” The Muslim subject is perfectly captured and is quaintly – and commercially – termed A Native of Palestine.

The latter terminology was probably crafted in order to seduce tourists to shell out on her many postcards and return to Europe or America with a pictorial memento of their Middle Eastern foray.

Part of Abbud’s souvenir enterprise appears in a picture taken by American photographer Adelbert Bartlett, who recorded her postcard stall in Nazareth. He also took a fetching picture of her, with her sister, together with a class of girls they taught at the German school in Bethlehem, thus offering us another slant on the Palestinian photographer.

THERE ARE several solar references in the exhibition. There is the aforementioned moniker in the El-Carmel newspaper ad. That may refer to the fact that Abbud always worked outdoors and only in natural lighting conditions.

There may also be something of a latter-day accolade in there. It seems that contemporary Palestinian photography researchers now laud Abbud’s oeuvre and view her copywriter-oriented choice of title in the ad as grounds for bestowing on her the unofficial title of “national Palestinian photographer.”

Whether Abbud should be placed on such a lofty pedestal is open to debate, but she was certainly adept at tracking down and capturing natural, man-made, and human subjects with great eloquence. She was equally capable of doing landscapes justice, as well as working with people and managing to catch them at their best and most expressive.

I noted that a Palestinian church cleric giving his teenage daughter a camera in the early 20th century does not sound like a frequent occurrence. “Nothing is normal in this story,” Raz chuckles. “She and her sisters learned to play the piano, and they could speak several languages. She was quite a character.”

Abbud eschewed the common practice of many photographers of setting up a studio and generating income by having customers sit for them against theatrical backdrops. She was a strictly outdoor practitioner, seeking out her locations and subjects and hoping to make a few bucks while she was at it.

Light permeates through the collection on all sorts of levels – physical, personal, and religious. “Light connects the sacred with photography,” Raz posits. “You can’t have photography without light. When Karimeh photographs the light, it is the light of Jesus.”

Intrepid marketer

Abbud’s marketing purview stretched to having some of her postcards colorized. “She probably sent them somewhere in Europe,” says Raz. “She really invested in the business. She wanted to sell. She also offers a bit of 19th-century style Orientalism, a bit of the Levant, to the [Western] tourists.”

The exhibition includes colorized shots of archaeological themed scenes, such as Sabastie Colonnade and Tiberias from the Lake. The latter was aimed at the Christian tourism trade, in view of the importance of the Sea of Galilee and the vicinity in the context of Jesus’s feted deeds.

A large percentage of the exhibits were loaned by Israeli photography collector Buki Boaz. He also participates in the exhibition, in a video in which he talks about Abbud and her contribution to documenting life here. The film also features an Arab professor who adds the Arab-Palestinian perspective; and a scholar of Christianity, providing learned insight into Abbud’s work and the social-religious lay of the land here during her lifetime.

The more formal shots are neatly countered by some human interest, such as a picture of farmers dancing as part of some festive event. And a frame Abbud named Nazareth – Peasant Woman and Child is a delightful vignette of everyday life here a century ago.

We get a good look at the intrepid woman in a large posed portrait of her, ostensibly triggering the shutter cable of a large camera set on a tripod. Abbud comes across as a quietly determined figure in Western-style apparel who knows what she wants to do with her life, and how to go about it.

Karimeh Abbud passed away in 1940, at the age of just 47, but her legacy lives on and is now getting some long overdue exposure. 

‘Karimeh Abbud – Sacred Souvenirs’ closes on June 7. For more information: (03) 641-5244; eretzmuseum.org.il.