Photography in Palestine
Open-knowledge reference entry
Photography has been used as an important medium to document the lives and culture of the Palestinian people. In the early history of photography, Palestine was one of the first places outside Europe to be photographed extensively.
History
Around 1860, a school for teaching photography was established in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem. The founder was an Armenian amateur photographer named Yessai Garabedian, a priest who had moved to the city from Anatolia to become the archivist at St. James Armenian Church.
Karimeh Abbud, thought to be the first Arab woman photographer working in the region and the first woman professional photographer to offer services to the public. Her advertisement published in al-Karmel sometime in 1932 states that she is the "only national female photographer".
Early twentieth century Palestinian life is richly documented by photographers in this period. A key figure is Wasif Jawhariyyeh (1904–1972), who collated nine hundred images to create the seven volume work, The Illustrated History of Palestine.
As time went on, the availability of photography led to a vibrant market for photographic portraits.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q126362378. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1860, 1932, 1904 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Photography in Palestine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.