Portraits of Palestinians: The photographer focused on correcting the image of his people

Following in Khalil Raad's footsteps, Adam Rouhana is taking his studio to 10 Palestinian cities

Adam Rouhana photographs a Palestinian woman in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank. Photo: Jude Al Qalawi

Adam Rouhana says his current photography project is inspired both by Israel's “genocide” in Gaza and the pioneering work of photographer Khalil Raad in Palestine during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Much like Raad did for the more acclaimed images from his prolific career, Mr Rouhana is taking studio photos of ordinary people in 10 Palestinian cities.

The Palestinian-American is using a large-format, Chicago-manufactured Deardorff camera, similar to the type that Raad (1854-1957) used to photograph Palestinian daily life before and after the violence that defined the years around Israel's creation in 1948.

Mr Rouhana's project will not be completed for another three to five years, but a selection of his work in two cities – 14 images from Hebron and Bethlehem – has attracted attention. It will be part of an exhibition of Raad's work at the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, in the occupied West Bank, later this year.

The eight other cities where he plans to take his mobile studio are Jerusalem, Jenin, Nablus, Nazareth, Acre, Haifa, Yaffa, Ramallah, Jericho and Bir al-Saba’.

Palestinian women photographed by Palestinian-American photographer Adam Rouhana in Bethlehem. Photo: Adam Rouhana

The son of a professor father and a writer mother, Mr Rouhana grew up spending his summers in Palestine.

He says that as he grew older, he began to see what he called the misrepresentation of Palestinians in the West, and how these representations are enabling the killing of Palestinians in Gaza today.

“This project aims, in part, to work against the representations formed through the constant stream of images of Palestinian death we are witnessing during Israel's genocide in Gaza,” Mr Rouhana told The National in Jerusalem. The city, alongside London, has been his home since 2022 and he spends half the year there.

Adam Rouhana in his darkroom in Jerusalem. Photo: Adam Rouhana

“Another primary goal of my project is to draw a line directly through history to circumnavigate a rupture in time and make space for photography in Palestine to develop free of the colonial gaze – photography by Palestinians for Palestinians,” said the Oxford-educated photographer.

The timing of Mr Rouhana's project has added relevance as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza continues to rise – with more than 64,000 killed to date – and international outcry grows over the deaths and starvation in the tiny coastal enclave.

With dozens killed or wounded every day since the war began 23 months ago, Mr Rouhana's photos of ordinary Palestinians, much like Raad's images, form a counter-archive of Palestinian life.

A father and daughter photographed by Adam Rouhana, who is taking studio shots of ordinary people in 10 Palestinian cities. Photo: Adam Rouhana.

These pictures establish facts on the ground: Palestinians are still very much alive and present in historic Palestine despite facing immense political, social and economic pressure and the killings in Gaza.

The pictures refute the cancellation of Palestinians by extremist members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and leaders of the settler movement, who have recently taken to using the phrase “the so-called Palestinians”.

“It has become harder and harder to photograph Palestinian life, more of a struggle in the face of the non-stop slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli occupation forces,” said Mr Rouhana, a 34-year-old native of Boston.

He sees his photography as part of the history of the profession in Palestine, whose focus has evolved throughout Ottoman rule, the British mandate and the era of Jewish colonisation.

Lebanese photographer Khalil Raad in 1902. Wikimedia Commons

His work, he explains, signals a return to the tradition of studio photography and, more importantly, helps to restore the “local gaze”, which essentially means Palestinians – or Arabs, as in the case of Raad – taking photos of Palestinians for an Arab audience.

“During the colonial period, western photographers took pictures of the ‘holy land’ but totally ignored the people,” he explained. “This very well may have paved the way for the Zionist myth of Palestine as a land without a people for a people without a land.”

Mr Rouhana acknowledges Raad as his chief inspiration, although he only became familiar with his work in 2023. The exhibition later this year is a “reconstitution” of a celebrated one held in Beirut in 2013 that was devoted to Raad's work and titled Pre-1948 Palestine is not just a Memory!

A photograph taken by Khalil Raad of a woman carrying a jar on her head in Nazareth, circa 1920. Photo: Khalil Raad/Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images