Curated by
Vigen Galstyan

Exhibition Dates:
October 17 – December 20, 2026

Hrant Nakashian is an Armenian photographer whose images provide a rare glimpse into the lives of Palestinian refugees in Gaza during the 1950s and 1960s.

An Armenian Genocide survivor, Nakashian grew up in Lebanon before moving to Jaffa in 1942, where he established his first photography studio. Displaced once again by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, he settled in Gaza and founded Studio Hrant in the early 1950s. Working with international organisations, including UNRWA and UNEF, he produced hundreds of photographs documenting the social, cultural and economic life of Palestinian refugee communities.

Drawing on the traditions of postwar humanist photography, Nakashian's images offer an intimate, unsentimental perspective on exile and displacement. Rather than portraying refugees as victims of historical circumstances, his photographs capture their determination to preserve a sense of normality, identity and dignity amid extraordinary adversity. Combining documentary immediacy with a subtly poetic sensibility, they reveal the complexity of everyday life and the beauty of communal resilience.

At a time when Gaza's historical and cultural heritage faces unprecedented destruction, Nakashian's surviving photographs acquire renewed significance as invaluable records of a threatened past.

The exhibition brings together thirty vintage press photographs generously loaned by Nakashian's children, Saro and Anoush Nakashian, alongside seven modern prints produced by Canadian-Armenian photographer Osheen Haroutyunian from the photographer's original exhibition prints.