Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Her father: Saeed. Her mother: Barbara Badr. Her brothers: Najib, Karim, Mansour. Her sisters: Katerina, Lydia. Her husband: Fares Tayea. Her son: Samir.
Karima Abboud was born in the city of Bethlehem to an Evangelical Christian family hailing from the village of Khiam in the Marjayoun region in southern Lebanon. Her family immigrated to Palestine in the mid-nineteenth century and settled in the city of Nazareth. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, and her family was associated with English missionaries. She grew up in a multilingual and multicultural atmosphere, which later helped her connect with a number of foreign and local Arab photographers.
Karima Abboud received her primary education in the city of Bethlehem, and continued her secondary studies at the “Talitha Qomi” schools in Beit Jala and “Al-Frere” schools in Jerusalem, then she joined the American University of Beirut to study Arabic literature.
Karima Abboud learned photography from an Armenian photographer, and began practicing this art in 1913, after her father gave her a camera. Given that her father was constantly moving around the cities and villages of Palestine, by accompanying him on his trips, she had the opportunity to take multiple pictures of the five Palestinian cities: Bethlehem, Tiberias, Nazareth, Haifa, and Caesarea.
After returning to Palestine in the early 1920s, Karima Abboud opened her first studio in her home in Bethlehem. She was even able to make money by taking pictures of women, children, and weddings. She became a professional photographer in the early 1930s and was famous for coloring and producing pictures. She would bring photo paper specifically from Egypt and develop the pictures in her own workshop. Soon, women from conservative families in her city were encouraged to visit her in order to take pictures of themselves without embarrassment. Women from various Palestinian cities, such as Gaza, Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem, were also encouraged to visit her for the same goal. In turn, she moved between Tiberias, Haifa, and Caesarea, and traveled to Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan on missions to photograph people or document certain archaeological and religious landmarks.
Karima Abboud was eventually able to establish four photography studios in Nazareth, Bethlehem, Haifa, and Jaffa, and she focused her work on photographing the daily lives of Palestinian women with their traditional embroidered costumes that express the villages and towns from which they came.
Karima Abboud died on April 27, 1940 after contracting tuberculosis and suffering from bouts of persistent fever. She was buried in the Evangelical Lutheran Church cemetery in Bethlehem.
Karima Abboud is an educated woman who mastered German, English, and Arabic. She dared to break stereotypes when she emerged as the first photographer in Palestine. She had a major role in this profession, which was alien to Eastern Arab society, especially since many conservative families did not accept her appearing on the scene. The lenses of this strange invention, except for some ancient families. Her photographs provided a visual document of social life in Palestine, and she succeeded in challenging the British occupier with a graphic and silent documentary about Palestinian life before the Nakba.
Karima Abboud’s name became prominent at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and historian Issam Nassar mentioned her in his book “Different Snapshots, 1850-1948 Early Local Photography in Palestine,” published in 2005. Then researcher Ahmed Marwat discovered her first group of photos in the summer of 2006 when he announced Yuki Boaz, an Israeli antiquity collector from the city of Jerusalem, wrote in local Arab newspapers about a group of photos bearing the signature of the photographer, Karima Abboud, asking for help in finding the history and roots of this Palestinian photographer. After communicating between them, this collector came to Nazareth, carrying in his possession four medium-sized albums of the work of the Palestinian photographer Karima Abboud, bearing her seal and her name in Arabic and English: “Karima Abboud, Shams Photographer.” After discovering this group, Ahmed Marwat continued his efforts and obtained from the Abboud family in Nazareth three more albums by Karima Abboud, written in Arabic and another in English with the same seal.
In commemoration of her memory and her pioneering role, a film was filmed about her called “An Incomplete Picture,” directed by director Mahasen Nasser El-Din. A book was also published about her life and its importance, in which the priest Mitri Al-Raheb, the researcher Ahmed Marwat, and the historian Issam Nassar participated, and the novelist and poet Ibrahim Nassar wrote a novel about her. Nasrallah, and several exhibitions were organized in Palestine and Lebanon to display her photographic legacy and remind her of its importance, considering that it is an integral part of Palestinian history and narrative.
122 years after her birth, the search engine Google celebrated this photographer by publishing a drawing of her in which she appears holding a camera.
In 2016, the Karima Abboud Photography Award was launched by Dar Al-Kalima University College of Arts and Culture in Bethlehem, with the aim of encouraging young Palestinian talents to pursue this talent professionally.
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