Documenting the Ruined Villages of Palestine
You are invited to explore Alan Gignoux’s photography exhibition Homeland Lost at P21 Gallery and attend a presentation by Ahmad al-Bazz of his recently published book, The Erasure of Palestine. The presentation will be followed by an in-conversation between the two photographers, moderated by Milena Franke.
Homeland Lost is an exhibition of works by award-winning documentary photographer Alan Gignoux. The project juxtaposes portraits of Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 and their descendants with photographs of their former homes and villages inside Israel. Created between 2004 and 2005 and first exhibited in 2006, this is the first time that works from Homeland Lost have been shown in the UK since their exhibition at the Barbican as part of the Palestine Film Festival in 2008.
Published in 2025, twenty years after the creation of Homeland Lost, Ahmad al-Bazz’s The Erasure of Palestine is the culmination of a three-year journey to document what remains of the hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns depopulated and destroyed during the creation and expansion of Israel from 1948 to the present.
Bringing these two projects into dialogue, the conversation will explore the photographers’ motivations and experiences of making the work, as well as the enduring significance of Palestine’s depopulated villages as places of memory, loss, and continuing presence. Reflecting on two decades of change, the discussion will consider what these landscapes reveal about history, identity, and the ongoing struggle against erasure.
SPEAKERS
Alan Gignoux, Alan is an award-winning documentary photographer and founder of Gignouxphotos, which produces documentary photography projects focussing on socio-political and environmental issues around the world https://gignouxphotos.com/
Ahmad al-Bazz, Ahmad, 1993, is an independent journalist and photographer based in the Palestine region. His work focuses on Palestinian-Israeli affairs.
Milena F., Milena is a member of SOAS Centre for Palestine Studies, an international human rights lawyer, a research fellow at the Lemkin institute for genocide prevention and co-director of the migration youth and children platform which aims to support young people from migrant backgrounds to influence global policy. She is also the founder of the MENA working group for the international criminal court.
