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Marie Al-Khazen's Photographs of the 1920S and 1930S Yasmine Marie al-Khazen’s photographs of the 1920s and 1930s Yasmine Nachabe 260207701 McGill University November 2011 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the PhD degree in Art History and Communication Studies © Yasmine Nachabe 2011 2 3 Table of contents Abstract Acknowledgements Introduction …………………………………………………………..…… p. 13 Chapter One: Historical background and methodology ………….……..… p. 15 Chapter Two: The history of photography in the Middle East region, from Orientalist to local practices …………………...……. p. 48 Chapter Three: Reading masculinity in the photographs ………....…..…... p. 76 Chapter Four: Dislocating masculinity in the photographs …………...…... p. 101 Chapter Five: Appropriating technology as an entry to modernity …...…... p. 124 Chapter Six: Crises of representation: women as metaphors for change ..…p. 146 Chapter Seven: Al-Khazen’s “successful failures:” glitches or surreal photography? …………………………………….…...…. p. 164 Conclusion …………………………………………………………...……. p. 185 List of Interviewees ……………………………………………………..… p. 193 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………. p. 195 Appendix ……………………………………..…………………………… p. 214 4 5 Résumé Marie al-Khazen est une photographe libanaise qui vécut entre 1899 et 1983. La plupart de ses photos furent prises dans les années vingt et trente dans la région de Zgharta au Nord du Liban. Ces photos font partie de la collection de Mohsen Yammine, un collectionneur libanais. Elles sont actuellement conservées dans les archives de la Fondation de l’image Arabe à Beyrouth et sont disponibles en ligne sur le site internet de la Fondation. Le corpus d’al-Khazen est constitué d’un ensemble de photographies captivantes qui représentent le quotidien de sa famille et de ses amis à Zgharta. Al-Khazen saisissait son milieu social grâce à son appareil photo. Néanmoins, elle ne se contentait pas de documenter ses excursions touristiques au Liban; elle explorait également les capacités techniques de son appareil photo en inventant des scènes photographiques et en manipulant les ombres dans l’espace photographique. Au travers de ses photos on retrouve les effets surréalistes qu’elle créait – peut-être intentionnellement – en faisant des tirages de deux négatifs superposés. Dans le cadre de ces images, on retrouve des bédouins et des Européens, des paysans et des bourgeois, des femmes et des hommes se partageant le même espace. La plupart des photos de Marie al-Khazen évoquent les destins de femmes indépendantes et engagées. Ces photos sont chargées de symboles qui suggèrent une représentation de la femme émancipée. A travers le corpus d’al-Khazen, des femmes apparaissent en train de fumer des cigarettes et de conduire des automobiles. On retrouve également des femmes qui accompagnaient les hommes 6 dans leurs excursions de chasse. Ces photos semblent incompatibles avec la façon dont les femmes étaient représentées dans la presse des années vingt au Moyen Orient où les femmes, en général, évitaient de se montrer dans des endroits publiques. Je propose une lecture qui articule la façon dont al-Khazen a utilisé l’espace photographique pour manifester sa vision de la nouvelle femme: la femme moderne comme celle décrite par Tani Barlow et ses collègues dans The Modern Girl Around the World. Cette anthologie représente la “modern girl” qui, selon Barlow et ses collègues, “disregards the roles of dutiful daughter, wife and mother,”1 en recherchant une émancipation sexuelle, économique et politique. Les photos d’al-Khazen m’incitent à interroger de façons multiples la représentation de la femininité et la masculinité à travers le comportement, le raisonnement, et les activités des femmes et des hommes dans ces photographies. Ces questions s’adressent à la sociologie de l’identité sexuelle et se proposent d’analyser la façon dont cette identité est évoquée dans les photos de Marie al- Khazen. 1 Tani Barlow, The Modern Girl Around the World: consumption, modernity, and globalization (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 245. 7 Abstract Marie al-Khazen was a Lebanese photographer who lived between 1899 and 1983. Her photographs were mostly taken between the 1920s and 1930s in the North of Lebanon. They were compiled by Mohsen Yammine, a Lebanese collector who later donated the photographs to the Arab Image Foundation. Her work includes a collection of intriguing photographs portraying her family and friends living their everyday life in Zgharta. Al-Khazen seized every opportunity to use her camera to capture stories of her surroundings. She not only documented her travels around tourist sites in Lebanon but also sought creative experimentation with her device by staging scenes, manipulating shadows and superimposing negatives to produce different effects in her prints. Within the borders of her photographs, bedouins and European friends, peasants and landlords, men and women, comfortably share the same space. Most of Marie al-Khazen’s photographs, which are circulated online through the Arab Image Foundation’s website, suggest a narrative of independent and determined Lebanese women. These photographs are charged with symbols that can be understood, today, as representative of women’s emancipation through their presence as individuals, separate from family restrictions of that time. Images in which women are depicted smoking a cigarette, driving a car, riding horses and accompanying men on their hunting trips counter the usual way in which women were portrayed in 1920s Lebanon. The photographs can be read as a space for al-Khazen to articulate her vision of the New Woman or the Modern 8 Girl as described by Tani Barlow in The Modern Girl Around the World. In this anthology, authors like Barlow point to the ways in which the modern girl “disregards the roles of dutiful daughter, wife and mother,” in seeking sexual, economic and political emancipation.2 Al-Khazen’s photographs lead me to pose a series of questions pertaining to the representation of femininity and masculinity through the poses, reasoning, and activities adopted by women and men in the photographs. The questions which frame this study have to do with the ways in which notions of gender, class and race are inscribed within Marie al-Khazen’s photographs. 2 Tani Barlow, The Modern Girl Around the World: consumption, modernity, and globalization (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 245. 9 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Mohsen Yammine and the Arab Image Foundation for having found and preserved Marie al-Khazen’s photographs without which this project would not have seen light. I owe gratitude to the photographer’s relatives for their time and efforts in reminiscing bits and pieces of Marie al- Khazen’s life. Without them my research in Beirut, Bikfaya, Rayfun, Ehden, Zgharta and Ghosta would not have been complete. I am indebted to Professors William Straw and Michelle Hartman for their encouragement and advice on my dissertation. I am also indebted for the valuable comments of Professors Darin Barney, Amelia Jones and Martha Langford. I owe special thanks to all those people who helped me to collect my material, especially the staff at the McGill library and the archive of Alexandria, Université Saint Esprit Kaslik, the American University of Beirut, the Orient Institute and the Lebanese American University. My research would not have been possible without the financial support of the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation and the Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture grants. Finally, my thanks go to my friends, scholars, and family who have over the years made more contributions than I or they possibly even recognize. Among them, Caroline Bem who helped me edit part of my thesis. I am equally thankful to many conversations with Joumane Chahine, Lina Baker, Grace Chammas, Tammer el-Sheikh, Kirsten Scheid, Nathalie Fallaha, Paulina Mickiewicz, Rafico Ruiz, Lalai Manjikian, Rafah Joueijati, Hala Bizri, Badr el-Hage, Jeroen Kramer, Tamara Sawaya, Sana Chkeibane, Akram Zaatari and Dima Ayoub. Renwa, Mahmoud, Mona, Lena, Reem, Omar and Laila who prevented me from becoming completely absorbed by my work. Hisham, Bshara and Walli for their confidence in me and their positive and encouraging attitude all along this journey. I must thank Nour and Karim for their patience and understanding and mostly Ali, who was left with no choice but manage the household when I was writing. 10 11 Notes on transliteration To standardize the transliterated terms for non-Latin terminology, all Arabic terms are transliterated following the International Journal of Middle East Studies, IJMES system, except in cases where a more commonly accepted version exists or when the person named has provided a transliteration. Diacritical marks are used only to indicate the Arabic letters ‘ for the ‘ayn and ’ for the hamza. The name al-Khazen appears in different transliterations — al-Khāzen, al-Khāzin, el- Khazen — in several publications. For consistency purposes, I use “al-Khazen” all through my thesis. 12 13 Introduction When I first saw Marie al-Khazen’s photographs on my computer screen, the images made me stop and stare.3 They probably appealed to me, I thought at the time, not because of the presence of men and women in the photographs, but rather because the way men and women were presented in the photograph “pierced” me.4 The Barthesian “punctum,” for me, was the confidence women showed in the photograph. I then looked up the 109 digitized photographs by al- Khazen and thought they were intriguing. I decided to pursue further the reading of the photographs as an encounter between the images and the changing perceptions of women and gender relations today. Unlike mainstream representation of women in the turn of the century Middle East, in al-Khazen’s photographs, she and the other women in the photographs “come out” as thoughtful, and self-determined. Marie al-Khazen’s photographs were neither dated nor captioned. Most of them were taken in Zgharta, a village in the North of Lebanon. Every time I found new information related to the photographs, they became even more fascinating. They provoke questions that often require an engagement of the reader’s imagination in order to be answered.
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