Picture Palestine Before Israel: MEMO in Conversation with Prof Issam Nassar, Dr Stephen Sheehi & Prof Salim Tamari

Middle East Monitor Conversations

Jerusalemite historian Wasif Jawhariyyeh photographed a changing Palestine over many decades, under Ottoman, British and Israeli rule. A new book about his work highlights Palestinian life and identity across eras

Join us for an illuminating discussion with the authors of Camera Palaestina: Photography and Displaced Histories of Palestine as they vividly bring to life Jerusalemite historian Wasif Jawhariyyeh and his remarkable seven photography albums chronicling Palestinian life and identity across eras. Learn how this visual record challenges colonial narratives and provides unparalleled insights into the Ottoman heritage and cultural evolution of Palestine from 1904 to 1972.

Jawhariyyeh's albums provide unmatched windows into Ottoman roots and cultural transformations that powerful forces have sought to obscure. Through his photography spanning many decades, the erased heritage and evolving identity of Palestine is recovered and illuminated. Join us for a conversation with Prof Issam Nassar, Dr Stephen Sheehi, Prof Salim Tamari who discuss Jawhariyyeh's life work documenting a rapidly transforming Palestinian society under Ottoman, British and Israeli rule.

Professor Issam Nassar is a Palestinian historian of photography in Palestine and the Middle East. He is professor of History at Illinois State University and a research fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies. He taught at the University of California at Berkeley in 2006; Bradley University in 2003–2006 and Al-Quds University in 1998–2003.

Winner of the MEMO Palestine Book Award 2022, Dr Stephen Sheehi is the Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Chair of Middle East Studies. He holds a joint appointment as Professor of Arabic Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and the Program of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) as well as a core member of the Asian and Pacific-Islander American Studies Program (APIA). He is also the Faculty Director of the Decolonising Humanities Project.

Prof Salim Tamari is Institute of Palestine Studies senior fellow and the former director of the IPS-affiliated Institute of Jerusalem Studies. He is editor of Jerusalem Quarterly and Hawliyyat Al Quds. He is professor of sociology at Birzeit University and an adjunct professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Palestine Book Awards in 2018.