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The recent discovery of the studio portraits of Karimeh Abbud ('Lady Photographer' as she used to identify herself) will undoubtedly compel us to re-evaluate the history of Palestinian photography. The Abbud family is well known in Nazareth as a family of great learning. Her grandfather, Salim AbbuAsd, studied pharmacy at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, and then later went on to become the senior pharmacist of the Nazareth English Hospital, founded in 1861 by the Armenian physician, Kaloost Vartan, and supported by the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society (EMMS).1 Her father was Rev.
As'ad Abbud, a well known Protestant minister who served in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Haifa, and Nazareth.2 According to Rafiq Farah, an authority on the Protestant churches in Palestine, the family's origin is from southern Lebanon. His name was Sai'ed and not As'ad, and he served as a lay preacher in Shefa Amr (1891-1899) and later joined the Lutheran Church and became a pastor andserved in Bayt Jala from 1899 until 1905 when he was transferred to Bethlehem. He was ordained as a Lutheran pastor on 26 September, 1909; he died in his native village Khiam in Lebanon in June 1949.3 As'ad Abbud's constant travel in Palestinian cities and villages exposed Karimeh from her youth to the varied landscape of the country. Eventually they settled in Bethlehem, where Rev. Abbud became the parish priest and Karimeh was given her first camera in 1913 as a gift for her 17th...