Kegham Djeghalian The First Photographer In Gaza
Kegham, the grandfather, was from Armenia and traveled to Jerusalem as a child with other survivors of the Armenian Genocide in 1915. He grew up in Jerusalem and Jaffa and worked in a photography studio, where he learned the basics of the craft. In the 1940s, he opened his first photo studio, Photo Kegham, in Gaza City in 1944. He was Gaza's first photographer and one of its most important photographers.
His pictures show life in the city before it was transformed by the war. Kegham photographs the social and political development of Gaza over nearly four decades in the mid-20th century, when Israel imposed a blockade and heavy bombardment of the strip.
Some of the portraits feature smiling subjects of various ethnicities who look dreamy out of the frame. Others show military personnel and gatherings such as picnics or even costume parties.
The images are varied and uplifting, offering invaluable historical insight into daily life barely recorded during Gaza's tumultuous transition. There he documented daily life under the British Mandate, which ended in 1948, and during Egyptian rule from 1949 to 1956 and from 1957 to 1967.
He also photographed the refugee camps that formed on the outskirts of Gaza after the establishment of Israel in 1948 and documented the Israeli occupation of Gaza in 1956 and the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1967. Kegham took a more active role in the Palestinian resistance than simply documenting the struggle during the Israeli occupation.
Djeghalian cooperated with the Egyptian intelligence services when Israel occupied Gaza in 1967 because he sent them negatives not only from Gaza but also from the network of Armenian photographers working in the West Bank. Kegham was very patriotic and a supporter of the Palestinian cause. He was even called Al Musawer Al Fedai (Guerrilla Photographer).
Shortly before the Arab-Israeli conflict broke out in 1967, Keghm's family left Palestine for Egypt, but Keghm refused to leave until he died in 1981. It's his home. After Kagham's death, he left the photography studio to his assistant, Maurice. After Maurice's death, he left the studio and its archives to his brother Marwan.
