Dor Guez Samira, 2020 Archival inkjet print Work: 145 x 112 cm
Samira’s story is a starting point for Guez’s artwork and the Christian-Palestinian Archive project (CPA). Guez founded the CPA, 2006 after discovering a suitcase filled with old photographs and documents at his grandparent’s home in Lydda. 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.
This work tells the story of Dor Guez's grandmother, Samira Monayer, and her siblings between 1938 and 1958 through a series of manipulated archival materials the artist calls “scanograms.” Each image documents significant events before the family was expelled from Jaffa, forced to relocate to Lydda, Amman, Cyprus, Cairo, and London. Two of the scanograms depict Samira’s wedding in Lydda’s ghetto, 1949. It was the first Palestinian wedding after the Palestinian exodus from land claimed by Israel (known as al-Nakba, “the catastrophe”)
