MEMORIES OF A LOST JERUSALEM
Al Arabiya
Thu Feb 09, 2012 15:25 pm (KSA) 12:25 pm (GMT) Thursday, 09 February 2012
The Graf Zeppelin over Jerusalem, 1931 by Elia Kahvedjian (Elia Photo
Service) inShare.0By Niamh McBurney for Al Arabiya
Some eras remain engraved in memories. But others are fortunate enough
to be documented by the sagacious few. Elia Kahvedjian collected and
took around 3,000 photographs of Jerusalem and surrounding areas in
the early part of the 20th century. Kahvedjian documented Jerusalem
in its final years under the British Mandate, preserving forever
parts of the city that were soon to be destroyed or redeveloped.
Born in Urfa, in southern Turkey, Kahvedjian was a refugee of the
Armenian genocide. Forced on a death march with his mother after his
remaining extended family was murdered by Ottoman troops, the young
Elia, estimated by his family to be around 10 or 11, was sent to an
orphanage in Nazareth run by the American Near East Relief Foundation.
When he told the orphanage he didn’t know his surname, they asked
what his father sold in his shop. “Coffee”, he replied, so he became a
‘Kahvedjian’, from ‘kahve’, the Turkish word for coffee.
At the orphanage he was taught by Garro Boghosian, an amateur
photographer who began paying Kahvedjian to accompany him on his
excursions in order to carry his unwieldy equipment. The young orphan
fell in love with photography, and from Nazareth he was sent to
Jerusalem, to live in another orphanage. There he began working for a
wealthy Christian family, the Hananya brothers, who ran a photography
shop in the center of the city.
Working in the photography shop gave Kahvedjian the opportunity to
further his knowledge in the trade. When the brothers grew older and
wanted to retire, Elia bought the shop from them and continued to
run it. His family have recently found a picture of Elia in a group
portrait of the Jerusalem Order of the Freemasons. They believe his
association with the Freemasons gave him access to contacts within
the British army, which subsequently become pivotal to his survival.
According to his family, a British army officer warned Elia two days
before the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (referred to by Israelis
as the War of Independence) that he should dispose of his belongings
and leave the city. He hid his negatives and photos in a storeroom
in the Armenian Quarter, closed the shop and fled the city.
When he returned, in 1949, he opened the shop in the Christian Quarter
that remains the “Elia Photo Service” to this day. In 1987 Kahvedjian’s
daughter-in-law rediscovered the forgotten glass-plate silver nitrate
negatives when she tidied the storeroom. The family developed a number
of the films, and organized the photos for Elia’s first exhibition,
held in the American Colony Hotel. The exhibition was wildly received,
and the family proceeded to turn the shop into a small photographic
museum. Filled with the black and white photos that span Kahvendjian’s
career, the shop serves tourists keen for images of a time gone by
and residents reminiscing about their earlier lives.
In 1998 the family chose a selection of the photographs to create a
book, “Jerusalem Through My Father’s Eyes.” The book was printed under
the family’s supervision with paper imported especially from France.
The volume was the subject of a very public court case in the Jerusalem
District Court after several shop owners in Jerusalem began selling
unofficial copies it. The family won the case and were awarded
damages. It is still unknown where the forgeries were produced.
Today, Elia’s portrait watches over all those who come to gaze at his
pictures in his family’s small establishment. Antique cameras that
remain in working order hang from the ceiling amongst the black and
white memories of a lost time. According to his family’s estimate,
Elia died at 89, in 1999. But his life, and the life of an older
Jerusalem, live on.
From: Baghdasarian