(Re-)Framing the "Downtown People" of Haifa

How are photos being transformed in their journey from their production to the final performance in an exhibition?  This lecture focuses on a photography exhibition by Hamody Gannam, "Downtown people", which was exhibited at the Haifa City Museum (Israel) in 2015-2016, and analyzes the role of the curator and the photographs' printer as "Co-Creators". We contend that the Co-Creators' interventions led to a significant change of both form and content of the Downtown peoples' framing and representation. This change reflects a shift away from the photographer's gaze of the everyday in an Arab neighborhood of Haifa, toward the Israeli establishment gaze.

Gannam's photographs focus on the everyday life of small local business owners and of Arab families from different religions alongside Jewish families in a predominantly Arab neighborhood. "The Photographs", writes exhibition curator, Inbar Dror-Lax, "seek to look directly at the places and people who are barely visible to passersby in the renewed urban area, those that had been excluded from the public discourse." Despite this declaration, a thorough investigation of the exhibition and the catalog shows that the curator and the printer have framed the photographs ideologically, altering their original meaning.

Two forms of re-framing will be discussed: one which is focused on form, meaning the decision to exhibit blurry photos while the catalog presents the original focused photos, as well as the decision to print the exhibited photos in small sizes. These two decisions were explained by the curator as ideological.

The second framing relates to content and bares meanings of subordination: in both the exhibition and the catalogue the downtown people's series were divided into religious categories, perceived "less dangerousness" than the national classification.

By looking into the Co-Creators' interventions we highlight the process of translating everyday life into a museum's exhibition.