Dor Guez's 'Sanograms #1' is the best known series coming from the artist's ongoing project Christian-Palestinian Archive (CPA). The meaning of the term 'Scanograms' is literally drawing with a scanner...
Dor Guez's 'Sanograms #1' is the best known series coming from the artist's ongoing project Christian-Palestinian Archive (CPA). The meaning of the term 'Scanograms' is literally drawing with a scanner machine. Every Scanogram is made by three different scanners, each scan is programmed to feature a different aspect of the material, and then the artist composes the layers into one image. These fifteen scanograms, dating from 1938-1958, portray the artist's grandmother, Samira, and her family. Each of the images documents an important event in their lives while they were together before Samira's family was exiled from Jaffa and dispersed to Lod, Amman, Cyprus, Cairo, and London. One of these works depict Samira's wedding in the Lod Ghetto in 1949, one year after what was a significant date for them: July 13, 1948. The day when her hometown was conquered by Israeli military forces. Samira’s story is a point of departure for Guez’s project Christian-Palestinian Archive (CPA). Guez founded the CPA in 2006 after discovering a suitcase filled with old photographs and documents at his grandparent’s home in Lod. His family’s photographs were the first pillar of the archive. Today the CPA is an independent entity containing thousands of digital images from Christian-Palestinians across the world. The CPA gathers photographs through open calls. 'Scanograms #1' were presented in numerous prestigious institutions worldwide, including KW, Institute for Contemporary Art (Germany), Rose Art Museum Boston, (USA), Videobrasil Festival (Brazil), Istanbul Biennial (Turkey) and Dvir Gallery (Israel).
Dor Guez developed an artistic practice based on his personal history. By means of genealogical research he addresses an issue deeply rooted in the history of his homeland of Israel – the relationship between different ethnic groups who share the same nationality. As a common denominator his works share a tension that runs through the country which mirrors itself in his own family: His grandmother, Samira, links the Jewish Israeli Guez to the Christian Arab minority to which that branch of his family belongs. The Christian-Arab minority is a reference group which until now has not received significant attention as a differentiated ethnic group in the cultural field. The basis for one of his new series’ of images, SCANOGRAMS #1 (2010), are the old, torn, worn out photographs of Samira and her relatives, documenting the important events of their lives at a point in the past before the family was dispersed from Jaffa to Lod, Amman, Cyprus, Cairo and London. Dating from the year 1938 to 1958, the fifteen scenes portray Samira and her siblings. Several images from this series depict Samira’s wedding to Jacob in the ghetto of Lod in 1949, one year after what was a canonical date for them: July 13th, 1948. On this day, the city of Lod - or Al-Lydd, its Palestinian name - was occupied by the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organization. Less than one thousand citizens stayed, hiding in the local church, which later became the center of Lod’s ghetto - a small area fenced off with barbed wire and under the rule of the Israeli military. In the end, 95 % of Al-Lydd’s population was displaced.
Scanograms #2, 2011 The thematic series ‘Scanograms # 2’ is taken from Guez’s Christian- Palestinian Archive, which he has been compiling continually over the past three years. Ongoing and adaptive archiving practices are a major component for producing and forming a culture’s collective identity. Guez’s project is the first archive dedicated to the Christian-Palestinian community, a territorially spread out and disjointed series of communities, for whom Christianity is the common denominator. The archive’s starting point was the artist’s own family’s albums, which include testimonies of the life of the Christian- Palestinian minority. Today the archive has grown to include thousands of photographs and documents from the first half of the 20th century, representing communities in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Israel and Palestine. The project’s main goal is to create an online visual database, which will document and present the community and its history and will be accessible to the general public. The installation ‘Scanograms # 2’ contains nine black wooden objects, each presenting passport pages from the British Mandate of Palestine, before Israel was established. Each of the nine objects is presented alongside written testimonies in Arabic, which the artist has recorded over the past few years as part of the archive project. The visa stamps (from Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan etc.) and the testimonies evoke an image of a very different region than we know today, an open Middle East, with free mobility and open borders. The last stamp in the record is from 1947.
