In 2009, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay visited the International Committee of the Red Cross headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, to view archival photographs of Palestine, taken between 1947 and 1950. The images document the forced displacement of the Palestinian population – an event commonly known as the ‘Nakba’. Azoulay was instructed that the archival images could not be reproduced or exhibited unless strict conditions were met, limiting the free interpretation of the material and ultimately of history itself. In response, Azoulay decided to draw the photographs, creating a record that exists beyond the control of official narratives and archives.

About Ariella Aïsha Azoulay

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay holds a dual appointment in the Department of Modern Culture and Media and the Department of Comparative Literature at Brown University. She is a film essayist and independent curator of archives and exhibitions. Her research and recent book,  Potential History  (Verso, 2019), concern key political concepts/institutions: archive, sovereignty, plunder, art, human rights, return and repair.  Potential history , a concept and an approach she has developed over the last decade, has far-reaching implications for the fields of political theory, archival formations, and photography studies as well as for the reversal of imperial violence. 

Azoulay studied at the Université Paris VIII and received her DEA from the  École des hautes études en sciences sociales  and PhD from Tel Aviv University’s Cohn Institute. Her books include  Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography  (Verso, 2012),  From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950  (Pluto Press, 2011),  The Civil Contract of Photography  (Zone Books, 2008), and (with Adi Ophir)  The One State Condition: Occupation and Democracy between the Sea and the River  (Stanford, 2012). Among her films are  Un-Documented: Unlearning Imperial Plunder  (2019) and  Civil Alliances, Palestine, 47-48  (2012). Her exhibitions include  Errata  (Tapiès Foundation, 2019; HKW, Berlin, 2020),  Enough! The Natural Violence of New World Order  (F/Stop photography festival, Leipzig, 2016), and  Act of State 1967-2007 , (Centre Pompidou, 2016; Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa Fotográfico, 2020).