Over four years ago I stumbled upon my family archive by chance. I had become interested in uncovering my families history my first year of university in New York, an interest which was sparked by a conversation I had with a person from Jordan the first month of my studies. At a formal dinner when asked who my grandfather was, the look of recollection and subsequent conversation about him was enough to peak my interest. My Jiddo (Grandfather) passed a week before my 7th birthday, and I became curious about his life and decided a google search would satisfy my curiosity until I could call my mother. I stumbled upon an image of my Jiddo that my mum kept in the living room; he sat in a three piece suit with his grey hound dog and his signature moustache, it was not hard to recognise him. The image took me to the Arab Image Foundation where I found my families archive. The images that once were on the wall in my grandparents’ house in Amman, that I would pester my Teta (Grandmother) about since I was the height of the lowest hanging frame, were now on my phone in New York. It contained information and images I was unaware of, that of which just added to my curiosity.

Following covid I was able to go to Jordan to look at the physical archives. I sat with my Teta going through the seven albums, which had otherwise been sitting in a cabinet, having her tell me the history of the family along with stories of her and my Jiddo’s travels. It was a process that allowed me to get closer to the images, my family, and my grandfather’s memory. When she passed the following year, I found three more albums underneath a pile of papers in the cabinet right next to the one will all the albums. Leather bound and caption-less these images remain a somewhat mystery, apart from what I can piece together. The mystery of the images is what keep them alive, there is always more than what is shown and what is told - in this case what is not mentioned.

The photographs exist within a curated archive taken and put together by my Jiddo. The paintings are the result of my own research during 2019-2023, and work with this archive, along with external research through stories I have been told and documents of the time. My Jiddo’s archive has been the primary source which I have been referring to in this process.

Painting Process.

This archive is a combination of written records, newspapers, images, and captions. I studied the captions, which images were placed together, and how the albums were overall organised. The pages at times could not be opened all the way as the books are fragile due to age. Each image in the albums is accompanied with a caption, sometimes two, and occasionally the captions do not align with the photo it's placed with. It becomes a part of the process to figure out which caption goes with which photo. I would need to recognise faces that may appear and the style of the photo for a specific time where it may have been taken.