Rayya Ghul

My image of Jerusalem is formed through my father’s photographs; slides that have been passed to me since he died 23 years ago.  I was there with him when the photographs were taken in 1963, but I remember people, sounds, tastes and smells more than any visual image.  Last year a Palestinian artist, Reem Bader, transferred the slides into digital images for a project in which I participated.  Liberated from their cardboard frames, I could play with the digital images and realised they formed a panorama.  On that journey my father, aware that this might be the last time he saw his childhood home, had gone on to the roof top of his house and a school and taken the views that had been available daily as the backdrop to his life.  So these images are for me, the only chance I now have to see Jerusalem through my father’s eyes.

(collection of photos from Rayya Ghul)

In memory of Mahmud Al-Ghul (born in Silwan, East Jerusalem, 1923)

June 2006