Reading Marie al-Khazen’s Photographs: Gender, Photography, Mandate Lebanon

Description

The Lebanese photographer Marie al-Khazen seized every opportunity to use her camera during the years that she was active between 1920 and 1940. She not only documented her travels around tourist sites in Lebanon but also sought creative experimentation with her camera by staging scenes, manipulating shadows, and superimposing negatives to produce different effects in her prints. Within her photographs, bedouins and European friends, peasants and landlords, men and women comfortably share the same space. Her photographs include an intriguing collection portraying her family and friends living their everyday lives in 1920s and 1930s Zghorta, a village in the north of Lebanon. Yasmine Nachabe Taan explores these photographs, emphasizing the ways in which notions of gender and class are inscribed within them and revealing how they are charged with symbols of women’s emancipation to today’s viewers, through women’s presence as individuals, separate from family restrictions of that time. Images in which women are depicted smoking cigarettes, driving cars, riding horses, and accompanying men on hunting trips counteract the common ways in which women were portrayed in contemporary Lebanon. Cover page Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION PREFACE CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The al-Khazen family’s background Marie al-Khazen: A not-so-obedient daughter The photographs as a narrative How to write the history of photography in Lebanon when the history of Lebanon has not been written30 The social life of photographs Reflections on “oriental” photography in the region A feminist Nahda photograph Rethinking categories of gender in the photographs A feminist reading of the photographs Photographs to re-insert women in history Synopsis of the book CHAPTER 2 TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY, AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY, AND LOCALITY Identity, locality, and belonging Colonial viewing: Viewing colonialism Baalbek through Marie al-Khazen’s gaze An archival impulse The present recreates the past: Baalbek as an icon for a nation CHAPTER 3 WERE THERE EARLY FEMALE PHOTOGRAPHERS IN THE MIDDLE EAST? Emerging female photographers in the region Marie Lydie Bonfils, an Orientalist photographer in Beirut Bonfils’s mysterious and sensual photographs Karimeh Abbud, a studio photographer in Palestine Muting the Palestinians in the photographs Marie al-Khazen, an amateur photographer Sartorial codes domesticating Oriental spaces CHAPTER 4 PRODUCING ALTERNATIVE SPACES: DESTABILIZING FIXED IMAGES OF WOMANHOOD Visibility/invisibility in the space of the photograph Reinforcing the batal and the abaday20 Social hierarchy in the photograph Interpreting masculine accoutrement A mise-en-abyme of a masculine space Crossdressing as counterculture Layers of social, colonial, and gendered connotations Debating sartorial choices in the local press Fashion and body politics in Mandate Lebanon CHAPTER 5 WOMEN, POLITICS, AND PORTRAITURE DURING THE FRENCH MANDATE Representation of power and power of representation Reconciling the feminine with the feminist Collapsing the public and private Breaking conventional notions of feminine behavior Reclaiming her body CHAPTER 6 MODERNITY AS EXPRESSED IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS Women’s education as a condition for the nation’s entry into modernity The franji dress as a sign of modernity10 The Bedouin: Dissolving the dichotomy between being modern and being traditional Celebrating the establishment of a new airport in the north Mobility: Who controls the wheel? When women ride camels but also drive cars CHAPTER 7 “SUCCESSFUL FAILURES” OR MARIE AL-KHAZEN’S PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENTS Can human vision perceive two separate moments simultaneously? Photography as a technology Photography as art Photographs as imagined spaces Photographs as surreal spaces CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX