In 1944, Kegham Djeghalian Sr. opened Gaza's first professional photo studio. Decades later, his grandson found ~1,000 negatives in three boxes. On Tarwida, we talk about the archive, why the photos have no captions, and the "unmade archive."
Gaza's first professional photography studio opened in 1944, founded by an Armenian genocide survivor. Decades later, his grandson found its surviving negatives in a closet in Cairo.
Palestinian-Armenian visual artist and creative director Kegham Djeghalian joins Tarwida to talk about Photo Kegham of Gaza: Unboxing, the exhibition built from his grandfather's archive. It has toured Cairo, Sharjah, Geneva, and Marseille, with Bristol and Antwerp next.
In this episode:
Kegham is a visual artist, professor of fashion practices and visual culture, and artistic director and co-head of the fashion design department at the German International University in Egypt. He is also a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
This episode is hosted and produced by Tala Elissa. Our executive producer is Zina Jardaneh. Our associate producer is Zeena Shehadeh. Social media by Lara Dihmis. Research and copywriting by Dima Sharif. Branding by Sara Sukhun. Theme music includes excerpts from Clarissa Bitar, The Popular Art Centre - مركز الفن الشعبي & Rim Banna.
The episode was recorded on September 19, 2026. Watch the episode on YouTube here.
Tarwida is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture, and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists, including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, and more, about their very own Palestine.
In a nutshell, if you want to know more about (Creative) Palestine, this is the place to be.
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Relevant links & resources:
Chapters:
0:00 Cold open: scanning the first ten negatives
0:40 Introducing Kegham Djeghalian Jr.
2:00 Exhibition tour and the Order of Arts and Letters
3:10 Photo Kegham: the studio on the facade
4:50 From Anatolia to Jaffa to Gaza
8:00 Armenians and the history of photography in the Levant
10:30 "We shall return": a photographer's politics
12:30 Abu Bushara, and why he stayed in Gaza
14:00 The studio as archive, school and meeting place
16:00 What the photographs show of everyday Gaza
19:00 Photography without a colonial gaze
21:30 Knowing a grandfather he never met
24:00 Twelve years of searching, then three boxes in a Cairo closet
28:00 Scanning ten negatives and choosing to walk away
30:30 Returning to the boxes and "conversing with his ghost"
33:00 Para-archaeology and the unmade archive
37:30 Why the exhibition has no dates or captions
40:30 Self-portrait of Kegham and his children on the beach
43:15 The book, the publishers, and Gazans recognizing family in Cairo
45:30 What his grandfather would have thought
47:30 What happened to Photo Kegham
49:30 The Majdalawi fabric project
53:45 Archiving Intimacy: how to start a family archive