Alan Gignoux: Homeland Lost review – a landscape as bereft as its people

P21 Gallery, London
Resonant black and white photographs show Palestinian refugees and the sites today of the homes they were forced to leave during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war

These places were once filled with conversation, smells of cooking, laughter, comfort. Now I’m staring into a silent, rubble-strewn abyss. Eyewitness accounts that accompany documentary photographer Alan Gignoux’s black and white portraits of Palestinian refugees and the homes they were forced to leave refer repeatedly to the abundance that once came from these razed fields – olives, grains, figs, carob and grapes. Where there was life, now there is nothing. The vast losses seem etched into the faces of Gignoux’s subjects, even as they look back at his camera with defiance.

All Gignoux’s subjects have either been exiled by the Nakba – the mass displacement of Palestinians in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war – or are their descendants. They now live in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank or Gaza. Gignoux promised each of his subjects that he would to return to their homes on their behalf, and photograph them. The series gives a detailed view of what happened in different villages in 1948, the circumstances under which people left and the repercussions across generations.
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