Special Report, Page 71

After 140 Years, Studio Varouj Closes in Jerusalem’s Old City

By Phil Pasquini

Varouj holds his favorite of all his photographs, of the sun setting on the Sea of Galilee. (Staff photo P. Pasquini)

THE SIGNS IN the window of the small Armenian photo studio in Jerusalem’s Old City state simply: “Big Sale of Images.” The real story, however, is that with the closure of Studio Varouj at the end of 2009, the Old City has lost an historical photographic repository. Varouj Ishkhanian has decided to close his 140-year-old family-run business, he told the Washington Report, because the shop no longer is profitable. The downward financial spiral dates back to the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, when business began to steadily decrease. Moreover, because of the popularity of inexpensive digital cameras—not to mention camera cell phones—the demand for portraits or historical photographic prints has virtually evaporated. Income from Varouj’s last mainstay, wedding photography, has plummeted as well. On many days, the 73-year-old photographer lamented, he has no business at all.

The first photograph in the Arab world was taken in 1839. Many early photographers traveled great distances to the ancient ruins of Palestine and Egypt to capture exotic scenes for curious audiences in Europe. The first photographer in Jerusalem, Scotsman James Graham of the Society to Christianize the Jews in Palestine and Syria, spent four years in Palestine, and set up the first photographic studio there in the 1850s.

A photograph of Nazareth taken in 1892, taken by his grandfather Kikor Ishkhanian. (Staff photo P. Pasquini)

Since Graham’s days in Jerusalem, the city’s Armenians have dominated the profession in the holy city, learning their craft at a school opened in the late 1850s by Armenian Bishop Yassai Grapedian. For more than 159 years these original Armenian photographers and their descendants have been documenting the people, daily life and events in the Holy Land.

Varouj was 15 when he began to study photography at his grandfather Kikor’s studio on Jaffa Street. In 1964 Varouj moved the studio to its final location at 36 Al-Khanka Road in the Old City’s Christian Quarter. His business consisted of passport and ID photos, portraits, weddings, school pictures and daily life in the city, along with the production of postcards and the sale of old prints made by his grandfather. Although his father was not bitten by the photography bug, Varouj’s two sons and daughter have followed in the profession on a part-time basis.

With a nose for news and an interest in journalism, Varouj at one time worked as a photographer for al-Jihad, al-Filastin and al-Diffa newspapers. From the late 1950s through the early 1960s he was the semi-official photographer of King Hussein of Jordan, visiting the palace in Amman on many occasions to photograph the king. Proudly displaying the monarch’s portrait in his shop next to a signed photo of Jordan’s present king, Abdullah, Varouj said he was only waiting for a call from the palace in Amman to take the new king’s portrait.

Although his shop will be shuttered, Varouj will continue to sell prints and photograph the occasional wedding. He also is hoping to sell the many cameras he has collected, along with his beloved 8x10-inch studio camera. Varouj admitted he looks forward to working in his garden and raising flowers, adding that he is forever a film photographer, having not even a passing interest in digital photography.

Anyone interested in purchasing historic prints of Jerusalem and the Holy Land can contact Varouj at Studio Varouj, P.O. Box 14091, Old City, Jerusalem, via Israel.

Phil Pasquini is a free-lance photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area.