From the late Ottoman Empire through the British Mandate to the ever-present Israeli colonialists, aerial photography, filming and cartography have offered governments knowledge and power to control land, people and resources. Regardless of how, why, for whom and in what form such aerial material was produced, the Palestinian landscape was regarded as visual text that supported the shaping of politics, culture, economy and ideology.
The A.M. Qattan Foundation, in partnership with the Institute for Palestine Studies, is launching issue 82 of the scholarly journal Jerusalem Quarterly (JQ), one of the two issues (81 and 82) dedicated to the upcoming exhibition Palestine From Above. The issues are an integral component of the exhibition, which will publish a number of articles and archival materials that emerged during the research process. The two issues will merge to form the exhibition book and will include a selection of textual and visual archival materials and briefs on the artworks and artists.
Researchers and scholars sifted through the documents of many archives and libraries, including Istanbul University Nadir Eserler Kütüphanesi, Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Harbiye Askeri Müzesi, the Atatürk Library, the Australian War Memorial, the National Library of Australia, Hebrew University Libraries, Israel State Archives, the National Archives (UK), the Bavarian State Archives and the Library of Congress archives.
The exhibition subverts the power of documenting history, society and landscape by different power regimes by displaying works by artists alongside historical archival material. Contributing artists and institutions include: Amer Shomali, Andrew Yip, Rania Stephan, Studio CAMP, Rene Gabri and Ayreen Anastas, Jack Persekian, Sophie Ernest, Khaled Jarrar, Nahed Awad, Kamal Jaafari, DAAR, Gian Spina, the Eye Film Museum, Forensic Architecture and Riwaq.
You can view JQ issues 81 and 82 by clicking on the following links: