Yasmine Chemal's post on Lydie Bonfils

Portrait of Lydie Bonfilsprivate collection
documentation of Fouad Debbas, TFDC
source

To celebrate International Women's Day the British Library's Endangered Archive's blog published a very interesting post by Yasmine Chemali, grant holder of EAP644, about Lydie Bonfils and early women photographers in the Middle East.

It begins:

"Photography arrived in the Middle East in 1839, the same year that Louis-Jacques- Mandé Daguerre produced his first daguerreotype in France[1]. Félix Bonfils, a French printer who migrated from France to Beirut along with his family in 1867, established one of the first professional photographic studios in the Middle East. Very little is known about women photographers in the region. Félix’s wife, Lydie Bonfils, can be considered the first professional woman photographer in the region. 

"This blog will focus on the Bonfils production and especially on the photographs that could be attributed to Lady Bonfils. The Fouad Debbas Collection, based in Beirut, Lebanon, is the most important private collection of photographs and archives of the 19th and of the first half of the 20th centuries currently conserved in the Middle East, with approximately 40 000 photographs of the region. EAP 644 is currently focusing on digitization and assessment of the Debbas Bonfils collection

"Much has been written so far about the Bonfils family and their photographic establishment in Lebanon. From the moment they moved from France (Gard) to Beirut, Lebanon, until the establishment was sold to Abraham Guiragossian in 1907, Félix (father), Lydie (mother) and Adrien (son) produced one of the largest bodies of photographic work in the Middle East...."

We have several Bonfil photographs in the Archive's collection, including the one below, which is also illustrated in the post.

Group of Bedouins from Jericho c.1876-85
albumin print, Maison Bonfils
TFDC_520_034_0644
source

Establishing which member of the Bonfils family took them is tricky, and Yasmine Chemali explores this, noting:

"Traditionally, all photographs signed Bonfils were attributed to Félix, but it is now clear that both Lydie and Adrien contributed to the firm’s pictorial output. Specific authorship, however, is at best very speculative…"

Woman from Nablus c. 1876-85
albumin print
attributed to Lydie Bonfils (?)
TFDC_139_026_0619
source

We have assumed - but without good research - that Félix’s wife, Lydie Bonfils, took some of these because of her gender.  It looks like we were on the right track as Yasmine Chemali also discusses this later in her post:

"Due to social conventions in the Middle East, it is presumed that Lydie made the photographs of female subject."

But Lydie's role it appears was much wider.  We encourage all Archive friends and Education officers to  read Yasmine Chemali's beautifully researched and very interesting post, which you'll find here :)

Young woman from Lebanon c. 1876-85
albumin print
attributed to Lydie Bonfils (?)
 TFDC_520_002_0257.
source

Al Hannouneh's 5th Festival, Amman

Al Hannouneh society's fifth annual festival,
 which concludes on Thursday, featured song
and dance performances by Jordanian,
Palestinian and Egyptian troupes
(Photo by Dana Al Emam)
Source

Al Hannouneh festival celebrates Jordanian, Palestinian heritage

by Dana Al Emam  Jordan Times Apr 24, 2013 

AMMAN — In celebration of Palestinian and Jordanian heritage and folk songs, Al Hannouneh Society for Popular Culture held its fifth annual festival this week.

The festival is aimed at deepening Al Hannouneh's role in preserving the national heritage by bringing it to life for the younger generation, according to Nimat Saleh, the society's secretary.

The festival, which was supposed to mark Palestinian Land Day on March 30, was postponed due to a delay in Al Hanouneh Troupe's tour in the United States.

"On this day, we renew the need to hold on tightly to our land and heritage," Saleh said.

Land Day marks the anniversary of 1976 demonstration against the Israeli occupation in northern Palestine that ended in violence, resulting in the death of six Palestinian protesters at the hands of Israeli forces.

The festival, which opened earlier this week at the Royal Cultural Centre, featured song and dance performances by Jordanian, Palestinian and Egyptian troupes.

Participants included the Culture Ministry's troupe, the Palestinian band Wallaat, Al Mahabish, Al Aqaba Band and Al Hannouneh Troupe.

The festival also included an exhibition that showcased Palestinian culture such as paintings and traditional dresses.

Al Hannouneh Band concludes the festival on Thursday with a performance at the Palace of Culture at Al Hussein Youth City.

Al Hannouneh society organises a number of events and initiatives that aim at preserving Palestinian heritage and raising awareness on the history and geography of Palestine by broadcasting videos of live tours from the Palestinian territories.

People we'd like to invite to morning tea: Iain Banks

Iain Banks
Source: courtesy The Independent

Here on the Palestine Costume Archive's staff blog we have a post category for "people we'd like to invite for morning tea". These are people we admire, who'd we'd like to spend some time with. From queens to celebrity chefs, over the years we've invited lots of people to take us up on our invite and come join us for our tea break, we even promise to share some home made cakes.  Today we'd like to invite Iain Banks.

As we wrote on Facebook today:

"We were sorry to hear the attached news about Iain Banks, an author who's science fiction novels have brought great joy to our lives. He is also one of the good guys politically, calling in 2010 for a cultural and educational boycott on Israel following its raid on a flotilla of ships carrying aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip. Banks wrote in a letter to the Guardian newspaper that he had instructed his agent to turn down any further book translation deals with Israeli publishers: 

"Appeals to reason, international law, U.N. resolutions and simple human decency mean — it is now obvious — nothing to Israel... I would urge all writers, artists and others in the creative arts, as well as those academics engaging in joint educational projects with Israeli institutions, to consider doing everything they can to convince Israel of its moral degradation and ethical isolation, preferably by simply having nothing more to do with this outlaw state" 

"See his Wiki page for more details. We send our love and prayers to Iain and his family, and thank him again for his political courage and for writing magical novels that challenged and delighted us :)"

Now we know Mr Banks is no longer taking on any public commitments, but that doesn't mean we still can't send out an invite for him to join us for a cyber cuppa in our little corner of the interweb.  And if he can't attend, well no matter, we'll still raise a toast to him. Because his science fiction books especially have brought great joy to our lives over many years, including during some dark moments after the last Gaza trip.  We'd like to reassure him that we will share The Culture with each new friend and new generation. And to promise him that Wiki's List of Culture ships/ names will never stop making us smile.

Iain Banks: thank you :)

For more info:

• An article that explains why Iain Banks tore up his passport :)
• Iain Banks Wiki page
• The Culture - Wiki page
• Full April 2013 statement by Iain Banks
• Iain Banks - Small step towards a boycott of Israel

History of sequins post on "Threaded"

Great post about the history of sequins on the Smithsonian's "Threaded" blog:

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/threaded/2012/12/a-history-of-sequins-from-king-tut-to-the-king-of-pop/

:)

Why we'd like to invite Leunig to morning tea at the Archive :)

Al Hanouneh's Palestinian fashion show in Amman, June 2012

Published by Nadia Mayen
Al Arabiya with Agencies
Jun 26, 2012

The Palestinian folk dance group Hanouneh held a fashion show in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Saturday showcasing a number of traditional Palestinian dresses.

Hannouneh was formed in 1993 with an aim to promote and preserve the Palestinian folkloric traditions through music and dance.

Models sashayed down the catwalk as traditional music played in the background, displaying a variety of intricate clothing in a number of styles and vibrant colors.

Palestine is known to have a rich variety of traditional dresses, many of which are hand-embroidered. Traditionally, a person's village or town would be recognizable from the style and design of the clothing they wear. However, today many designers and dress makers have altered traditional styles to add a modern flair.

Nemat Saleh, Secretary-General of Hanouneh, said future projects would offer job opportunities for women in the country.

"We chose several dresses that were more than 80 years old and reproduced them. What you saw in the show today were replicas of these dresses," she said.

"We are interested in setting up an embroidery workshop to sustain the practice, not for commercial goals. Our objective is to preserve and protect the memory (of the Palestinian heritage) tied in with the social responsibility of the Hanouneh group, by finding jobs for women," she added.

The project took two years to complete and involved 60 women.

By: Nadia Mayen
Al Arabiya with Agencies

Education Officer assignment: "professional dialogue + exchange of experience + knowledge" workshops

photo: Sofie Pedersen source

Here's an assignment for our education officers worldwide:

Design in Context is a:

"comprehensive initiative for the exchange of expertise and experience between Danish and Palestinian designers. The objective is to rethink Palestinian textile design and equip the local women so that they are able to develop products with a wider market appeal. The plan is for the Danish designers to visit Palestine up to four times each year to participate in workshops with local designers and handicraft workers"

The Fashion and Textile Institute (FTI):

"is the first educational institution in Palestine for textile and fashion design. The institute was founded in 1994 and offers a two-year education in fashion design. The FTI is located in Beit Sahour, on the outskirts of Bethlehem."

Designskolen is:

"an education and research institution at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (KADK). The institute is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, and has existed for 135 years." 

All these things come together in Sofie Pedersen's interesting post / article in WomenDesign. This begins:

photo: Sofie Pedersen
source

Women’s lives told through the medium of embroidery
Author: Text and photo: Sofie Pedersen.  Published: 03-12-2012 

Personal stories are woven into Palestinian embroidery – stories that both challenge and surprise young Danish women. Expertise and information sharing were the buzzwords when students from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of design (Designskolen) and students from the Palestinian Fashion and Textile Institute first met with women from various handicraft cooperatives in Palestine.

“That cross-stitching is brimming with sex; all of the embroidery with red thread refers to menstruation. The local embroidery expert and designer Omar-Joseph Nasser-Khoury says shell-shaped patterns symbolise the woman’s vagina. Or ‘the woman’s reproductive organ’, as he puts when he’s within earshot of the Palestinian ladies,” explains a clearly impressed Maria Albertsen, project associate and designer from Designskolen in Denmark.
In partnership with the Palestinian designer Omar-Joseph Nasser-Khoury, she is responsible for the creative content of a series of workshops aimed at building bridges between Danish and Palestinian design, the goal of which is to provide mutual inspiration.

"The women of Palestine have a long and proud tradition of embroidery, but the work is time consuming and the pay is poor. Because of this, the challenge for the Danish designers has been to collaborate with their Palestinian colleagues and fellow artists in order to make embroidery relevant in a wider context with greater appeal, consequently giving the Palestinian women improved opportunities of earning money.    

"The exchange of ideas is being facilitated through the Danish NGO Det Danske Hus i Palæstina [The Danish House in Palestine]. The cornerstone of the project, which is called Design in Context, is professional dialogue and exchange of experience and knowledge between Danes and Palestinians. In addition to project associate Maria Albertsen, two students from Designskolen in Denmark are also participating – Tine Winther Rysgaard and Josefine Gilbert.  

"From Palestine, 12 students from the Fashion and Textile Institute at Beit Sahour are participating, along with 12 women from various handicraft cooperatives, organised under the Dalia Association. This is a Palestinian NGO that focuses on two key areas: “women supporting women” and “The Village Decides”, both of which focus on civil society and capacity accumulation.

"In the first workshop with the Palestinian women and the Danish designers, the group is given a detailed introduction to the symbolism of the embroideries embellishing the traditional Palestinian women’s dress. It is particularly surprising to the Danes how many stories are told through the cross-stitching on this traditional, loose-fitting garment that covers the entire body from the neck down to the ankles. These embroideries refer to genitalia, the woman’s menstrual cycle and encourage potential courters  (translation: Andrew Bell)

You can read the rest here.   This is a really great project. Kudos to all involved.  We look forward to learning more.

Now, for our education officers, here's your assignment:

Imagine that you, as an education officer of the Archive, have been asked to organize a similar series of workshops to promote "professional dialogue and exchange of experience and knowledge" between Palestinians and and textile designers from your current country of residence:

• What cross cultural connections in your own environment / community might be brought together?  
• What will you call your project?
• Tell us what kind of budget your workshops requires. Then imagine you only receive half. What cuts are required? How would you work around them? Who else could you approach for funding?
• How would you select your Palestinian participants? 
• How would you structure your workshops? What topics would be covered in each? Who would participate?
• After attending the first workshop Sofie Pedersen states in her article that "the Danes" attending the workshop now understand "traditional ... embroideries refer to genitalia, the woman’s menstrual cycle and encourage potential courters".  Is this singular conclusion one you would want your own non Palestinian workshop attendees to reach?  If not, explain in detail what conclusions you would prefer, and what components of pre1948 Palestinian costume and embroidery you'd hope attendees would take on board. 
• Create a reading list on Palestinian costume for both your Palestinian and non Palestinian attendees.  Make sure you feature publications in languages familiar to your workshop attendees.
• Danish student Tine Winter Rysgaard is quoted right at the end of the article "there’s still no doubting the fact that the Palestinian aesthetic is very different than ours". A similar situation may arise in your workshops. How would you try to redress aesthetic differences? More importantly, how would you define "the Palestinian aesthetic"?
• The use of the sketchbook mentioned in the second part of the article proved a resourceful practical tool for both groups attending the workshops. What practical tools might you include?

Send your responses to us via the staff email account. We look forward to hearing what you all come up with :)

Great article on Faith Fashion Fusion exhibition

Zulfiye Tufa, Reem Hakem and Toltu Tufa are part of the 

My Dress, My Image, My Choice fashion show at Northcote next week. 

Photo: Simon Schluter 

Courtesy: The Age website: Fabric interwoven with faith

Great article by Janice Breen Burns in two Australian newspapers promoting both The Powerhouse Museum's forthcoming "Faith, Fashion, Fusion: Muslim Women's Style in Australia" exhibition and the next "My Dress, My Image, My Choice" event.

We look forward to reviewing "Faith, Fashion, Fusion: Muslim Women's Style in Australia"  when it opens in early May :)

Fabric interwoven with faith
Janice Breen Burns
The Age April 28, 2012 (also The Sydney Morning Herald here)

 FASHION designer Howayda ''Helena'' Moussa, 35, remembers the delicious moment two years ago when she assumed hijab, fastening a headscarf around her hair for the first time. ''It was the most amazing feeling I had in my life,'' she says. ''I suddenly felt protected and safe.'' She'd also swapped her sassy ''boob tubes and backless summer dresses'' for the long sleeves and loose silhouette of modest Islamic dress and was shocked at the immediate effect. ''If I was speaking to a man, he would look into my eyes, not at my chest,'' she says. ''He would talk to me.'' 

Only one drawback marred Moussa's unexpected joy. She loves fashion, ''but traditional Muslim outlets have mostly very basic things'', she says. ''Very dark things.'' Her only option was to do as fashion-loving Muslim girls and women increasingly do: harvest what she could from high-street chains and make the rest herself. 

It was an ad hoc, unsatisfying compromise that evolved into a frustrating nightmare in summer when Moussa fossicked for long sleeves in a sea of singlet tops and stringy frocks. She and her sister Hanadi ''Hannah'' Chehab, 41, decided it simply wasn't good enough and vowed to offer Muslim women more fashion-friendly options. 

In Sydney's Muslim heartland, Bankstown, they rented an empty shop, hung out a shingle, Integrity Boutique, and stocked it with their own hybrid Islamic-Western fashion designs. ''We even took the [long-sleeved full-length traditional Muslim tunic] abaya and made it funky,'' Chehab says, giggling. Although she chooses not to adopt the hijab herself, Chehab is sympathetic to her sister's choice and is engrossed in designing for her. ''We both love designer clothes, we love up-to-date, feminine colourful fashion and accessories so that's what we sell.'' Colours, patterns, textures, details and trims are key. 

The sisters' business is one of a small but growing number of boutiques and brands, including the well-known Hijab House, established by Tarik Houchar in 2010. ''Modest fashion is one of the fashion industry's largest potential growth areas,'' says Glynis Jones, curator of Faith, Fashion, Fusion: Muslim Women's Style in Australia, a ground-breaking exhibition opening at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney next week. ''Many Muslims born here are forging their identity without some of the cultural background that impacted on their parents' generation,'' she says. The juxtaposition of religious tradition with modern Western culture is producing its own sartorial expression. ''They're renegotiating their faith and their place in Australian society. And they're interpreting the word 'modesty' in many different ways … It's a very big choice to express your faith so visibly. It's inevitable you'll become a kind of ambassador for your faith.'' 

Moussa agrees. ''Behind every scarf there is a different story, a different journey,'' she says. She often tells how hers began, after the sudden death of a friend. ''I wanted to get closer to God.'' 

However, for Melbourne sociologist and consultant for Faith, Fashion, Fusion, Susan Carland, 32, it was a slower process that started when she was 17. ''I started to wonder why I believed what I did,'' she says. ''I was raised in a Christian family but I started looking for answers to life, the universe and everything.'' She converted to Islam and assumed hijab at 19. ''I liked the idea of a religion that encouraged questioning,'' she says. 

Since then, Carland has answered thousands of questions about the religious, political and individual significance of her clothes through the regular event My Dress, My Image, My Choice. These fashion shows have run in community settings across the country for 10 years. Melbourne mother Saara Sabbagh established the event to bridge a gap that opened between Muslims and non-Muslims after the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. 

At the My Dress shows, Carland and Sabbagh answer basic questions: that the hijab scarf is worn draped to the shoulders; that modest layers mask, rather than emphasise, the figure and leave only the face, wrists and ankles exposed; and that burqas come in various forms with the most extreme, in some cultures, featuring a gauze panel over the eyes. ''Modesty'' is interpreted in different ways by Muslim men and women depending on their cultural, religious and personal criteria. 

''People are fascinated, horrified and curious because there is just so much baggage associated with our clothes,'' Carland says. ''They're either a symbol of repression, or they're a personal [liberating] choice, or they're something else … We need to see Muslim women as more than this piece of fabric.'' 

According to Houchar, 23, who started Hijab House when his sister, then 16, adopted the hijab two years ago, the Powerhouse Museum exhibition explores a remarkable cultural shift. ''Prior to Hijab House, there was nothing,'' he says. Every morning when his joyful young sister left the house wearing traditional abaya and a drab hijab scarf, he almost wept.
Houchar's partly finished business/law university degree was pressed into entrepreneurial service and now his stores offer a vast collection of the most fashion-forward hybrid Muslim styles in Australia. Houchar is contemplating expansion overseas but, in the meantime, his goal is well and truly reached. ''My sister wears Hijab House every day now,'' he says proudly. 

■My Dress, My Image, My Choice (the final, women-only dinner and fashion show after 10 years), the Regal Ballroom, Northcote, May 4, 0433 771 186. 

■Faith, Fashion, Fusion: Muslim Women's Style in Australia, Powerhouse Museum, from May 5, powerhousemuseum.com

Hussein Ibish's "Fetishizing nationalism"

Hussein Ibish is senior research fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. He blogs at www.Ibishblog.com. We've been discussing one of his many interesting blog posts. This one is on a topic oh so very familiar to the Palestine Costume Archive.

Have a read.  Good stuff.

Fetishizing nationalism
By Hussein Ibish, August 16, 2011

"For those in the grip of its authority, a clearheaded understanding of how nationalist ideology actually operates seems extremely difficult. 

"All contemporary nationalisms are based on constructed and imagined narratives about history, geography, culture, ethnicity and religion. Such narratives invariably involve a great deal of what can only be described as fiction. In particular, reading the past—whether real or imagined—as a justification for present-day political projects is, by definition, intellectually treacherous territory. 

"Last week I wrote about a new book tracing the history of Palestinian traditional dress in which I ruminated on the development of contemporary Palestinian national identity. Only a lingering degree of naïveté can account for my genuine surprise at the outpouring of outrage the column produced. I haven’t written anything this controversial in years, though all I did was assert that a new book helps demonstrate that Palestinian nationalism—while a contemporary, 20th-century phenomenon—is deeply rooted in broader Arab and ancient traditions and civilizations, and has its own distinctive cultural styles. 

"I had not taken into account the existential need some nationalists have to deny every aspect of a rival’s authenticity. The pro-Israel voices objecting to these virtually self-evident observations seem unconcerned with defending the Israeli national identity, but obsessed with attacking the invocation of any heritage or tradition on which Palestinian nationalism can draw. 

"The impulse to negate the other seems overwhelming. It appears much more powerful than any imperative to define, defend or interrogate one’s own nationalist identity, which is taken for granted. 

"These critics assume all aspects of Jewish and biblical Hebrew mythology, traditions and history automatically legitimize the Israeli national project. However, such claims were highly controversial among the Jews of the world for many decades, and are again being subjected to significant interrogation 

"The traditional Zionist narrative holds that only the present-day Jews of the world are the genetic, religious and cultural heirs of the biblical Hebrews and ancient peoples of the “holy land.” Everyone else is a Johnny-come-lately at best, with the Palestinians usually ascribed no deeper origins than the arrival of Islam in the area (a mere 1,200 years ago)—and in many cases much less than that. The idea that they too, and perhaps even more than Jewish Europeans, might have genetic, ethnic and cultural ties to the ancient and biblical peoples of the land—including the ancient Hebrews—has been rarely considered. 

"In the decades immediately preceding 1948, the word “Israeli” was totally unknown and meant nothing, and the word “Palestinian” meant many things, but certainly not what it means today. Both of these national identities—the Jewish Israeli and the Arab Palestinian—are contemporary constructs born of recent history. They are largely grounded in their encounter with each other. They also embody deep cultural memories, traditions, myths, legends and tendentious narratives that at least to some extent retrofit the past to privilege their own national projects. 

"But all of this is entirely beside the point. Neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli national identity is more or less “authentic” or “legitimate” than the other because both are self-defined nationalisms adhered to by millions of people. The extent to which they are based on imaginary constructs—as all modern national ideologies ultimately prove largely to be—is meaningless in practice. Objecting to these mythologies is the political equivalent of complaining about the rain. 

"Systematized discrimination or exclusion is, of course, unacceptable for any decent society. But modernity dictates a healthy respect for both the human rights of individuals inherent to their status as human beings and the rights of self-defining national collectivities to self-determination. Contemporary political and national identities, including the Israeli and Palestinian, are invariably based on a confused mélange of myth, legend and history. But that is politically irrelevant. They are what they are, say what we will. 

"The deployment of myth, legend, history and tradition in the service of contemporary and modern national projects is, at least at a certain register, intellectually and philosophically invalid. Yet nationalist agendas can help people secure their individual and collective rights, achieve self-determination, overthrow colonial domination and serve other useful purposes. 

"Indeed, no sizable group of people can function successfully in the world of modernity without participating in some national structure. Hence the urgent need to end the virtually unique statelessness of the Palestinians, who are not citizens of Israel or any other country. 

"The analytical challenge is to recognize that while not all nationalist claims are necessarily equally valid (they may speak on behalf of very few people, for example, and not really have the constituency they claim), in some important senses they are, however, all equally invalid. Championing one’s own nationalism as self-evidently “authentic” at the expense of a well-established, deeply-rooted and much-cherished rival identity is a particularly lowly form of self-delusion, chauvinism and fetishism."

"There is always a miracle in Cairo"

Wonderful, wonderful article by Robert Fisk in The Independent about the Saddam Hussein forged biography published under his name. Well worth a read - the title of this post is swiped from it :)

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-curious-case-of-the-forged-biography-776775.html