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History and photographic memory

In this interview, artist Akram Zaatari reflects on his longstanding work with photographic heritage in the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab diaspora, and considers the different ways in which he has used photographs to illuminate and unfold historical truths. Charting divergencies and disagreements around issues of preservation that have arisen over the years within the Arab Image Foundation (of which he is one of the founders), Zaatari points out radical gestures of preservation that return photographs to the ‘living tissue’, the ‘larger ecosystem’ and a set of affective relations from which they had become detached. The far-ranging metaphor of archaeology that the artist employs to illuminate his practice also lends itself to describe the destructive nature of certain acts of collecting premised on ‘excessive accumulation’, of which the pillage of the archaeological heritage in the Middle East and North Africa in the late 18th and early 19th centuries is an emblematic example. Collecting, however, is also a tool for writing history and the displacement of photographs serves as a crucial step to reconfigure them within new narratives. Attentive to the changing nature of photographic archives, Zaatari frees photographs from fixed and prescribed readings, bringing new perspectives to bear on them without necessarily denying those former interpretations. Additional layers of historical information can be found nestling in details accidentally captured by the camera's lens, in signs of material damage or ‘worthy’ defects. In Zaatari’s hands, digital technologies are used to emphasize, not to occlude the traces of these material histories. In the folds of the archives, hidden narratives wait to be revealed and unfolded under the loving gaze of the artist, collector and historian.