Old City of Jerusalem's Armenian photo shop stands the test of time

The Old City certainly has it charms. Even now, with the distressing paucity of tourists as the local security issues continue to abound, and the gossamer-thin pedestrian traffic along the stepped and winding alleyways of the ancient walled hilltop spot. And there always seems to be something new to explore and discover there.

And so it came to be. While I made my way from the famed Lina hummus eatery a few days ago, back toward Jaffa Gate, I came across a brightly colored storefront which proclaimed that the premises housed Elia Photo – Service. The display window was a merry hodgepodge of large framed monochrome prints depicting scenes from yesteryear Jerusalem. There was also one hefty-looking tome on show which goes by the emotive title of Jerusalem Through My Father’s Eyes. The book contains dozens of prints of shots taken all over the country, primarily from Jerusalem of the 1920s and 1930s.

I got some of the tidbits of the place’s storied history from the current proprietor, Elia Kahvedjian.

“Our family name is interesting,” the genial fortysomething man tells me as I eye some of the seeming myriad prints arranged in old glass-fronted wooden cabinets that line the walls of the diminutive customer area. As I was to discover over the next hour or so, there are lots of interesting things about the business. “When my grandfather came here, he was asked his name. He knew his given name – Elia; I am named after him – but he had no idea of his surname. He remembered that his father used to lug sacks of coffee, so he told the official. That’s how we ended up with Kahvedjian.” Kahweh in Arabic means “coffee.”

I was clearly set for an entertaining hour or two of storytelling, and Kahvedjian did not disappoint.

The history of the old Armenian photography shop

The shop has been around since 1949. Interestingly, it is located in the Christian Quarter rather than the Armenian sector. Kahvedjian Sr. was an Armenian who hailed from Urfa in southeast Turkey. He was, his grandson assumes, born around 1910. “He was about five years old when he was on a death march, together with his mother, in 1915. His mother sensed something was about to happen and begged a Kurdish man to take her son.”

It was a fateful, timely move. “My grandfather remembered that the Kurd took him, and then he heard the rat-a-tat of gunfire and then silence. Everyone on the march was dead.” That traumatic early childhood experience took place as the crumbling Ottoman Empire engaged in the “ethnic cleansing” of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians.

The youngster’s trying start to life continued with his being promptly sold into slavery “for two gold coins,” followed by several months of wandering through the streets homeless. That must have been a helluva trial for the kid. It is a wonder he survived at all.

“He was eventually rescued by Americans from the Near East Relief Foundation,” says Kahvedjian, who worked in the hi-tech industry before taking the shop over, to keep the now 75-year-old family business going. “They saved a lot of children. They mentioned my grandfather in a book about all the children they saved. I think it came out in 2006.”

That’s how Kahvedjian Sr. came to this part of the world. “They brought him to Nazareth,” Elia recalls.

The recent arrival from Turkey also got a fortuitous start to his photographic road. “When he was at school, one of his teachers used to take photos, and he needed a strong student to carry the heavy glass plates. They were 8x10 inches each. They really weighed something.” Kahvedjian Sr., a strapping lad at the time, got the job and began taking an interest in the craft. “He started asking the teacher questions about photography. Sometimes he got answers,” Kahvedjian chuckles.

By the time he was 16, he was summarily cast adrift. “In Nazareth, they told him he was already a man and had to manage on his own,” says the grandson.

The teenager relocated to Jerusalem and found employment with the Hanania Brothers photography enterprise. “It was just up the road from Jaffa Gate, on IDF Square,” Kahvedjian explains, “where the Fast Hotel was, which is now the Dan Pearl Hotel.” Before the establishment of the State of Israel, the spot was known as Allenby Square.

The young man made good progress in the profession, imbibing the technical and technological nuances, and honing his own hands-on skills in the process. “He was really enthused with photography,” Kahvedjian notes.

By the end of his teens, he was primed to take the next incremental step. “He worked for Hanania Bros. until 1930 when the owners suddenly decided to move to Britain. I think they sensed which way the political wind was blowing. Their young charge grabbed the opportunity to strike out on his own with both powerful and eminently capable hands. The current proprietor says his then twentysomething granddad was an ambitious resourceful character. “He decided to buy the business in Jerusalem. There was only one problem. He didn’t have the cash,” Kahvedjian laughs. It was time for a leap of faith. “He offered them three times their asking price, which he would pay in installments. He was really determined. Not everyone would offer such a high price.”

The deal was struck, and the new owner made great strides – that is, until the local geopolitical tectonic plates shifted once more.

Mind you, he did get some substantial help to weather the storm from unexpected quarters. “He paid off all his debts within three years. He did well, but war was brewing. Two days before they left, British soldiers he knew well came to him and warned him that there was trouble on the way.” They didn’t just tip him off; they provided Kahvedjian Sr. with the means for getting his precious equipment, stock, negatives, and prints out of harm’s way. “They sent a couple of army trucks to transport the equipment and other things to a place in the Armenian Quarter [of the Old City]. It was an underground basement.” That was as good a repository as any. “Fortunately, the basement was cold, dark, and dry, which was perfect for preserving negatives.”

The building with the photography went up in flames a short while later.

And there they sat until 1987, when the founder’s son decided to dig into the stash which his father had always said was “a load of old garbage.” In fact, it was anything but trash. The photographic treasure chest comprised over 3,500 works snapped all over the country, the prints of which now reside at the store on Al-Khanka Street in the Christian Quarter. A selection of the photos now make up Jerusalem Through My Father’s Eyes, which was compiled by Kahvedjian Sr.’s son, the current owner’s dad.

“My grandfather opened the shop in 1949,” Kahvedjian relates. “People said he was crazy but, like always, he did well.” The founder duly prospered, first under Jordanian rule and then under Israeli rule following the Six Day War. “He really did well after 1967,” says Kahvedjian.

AS I peruse the hundreds of A4-size black-and-white prints dotted around the septuagenarian display cabinets, I catch a glimpse of a group shot with a difference. The gents in the 1930s photograph, lined up in two rows, all convey a serious, if not stern, demeanor. But there is a palpable sense of a left-field element to the snap. They are all sporting a banner-like garment which seems a little otherworldly.

“What do you think that is?” Kahvedjian asks me teasingly.

I take a stab in the dark. “The only thing I can think of is the Freemasons,” I proffer.

The proprietor’s smile tells me I’d hit the secretive nail on the head. “We found that in 2001, two years after my grandfather died. He must have been a member of the local Freemasons, and that’s probably why the British soldiers helped him.”

Elementary, my dear Watson.

Kahvedjian Sr. was not only adept at snapping; he also had a keen eye for the intriguing human element. “He liked to take pictures of people,” says Kahvedjian. “That’s what really interested him.”

You get that from the prints in Jerusalem Through My Father’s Eyes. “Jerusalem dancing gypsies, 1927,” for example, not only freezes the traditional hoofing action – no mean feat with the film quality and technology available to Kahvedjian Sr. almost a century ago – but also captures the spirit and emotion the performers exude. “Arab fortune teller reads for Jewish customer, 1936” and “Jerusalem, eating hummus, 1935” also document the human zeitgeist and street-level action to a tee.

We can be thankful for the Freemason protective connection and the fact that Elia Photo Service – Photographic Dealers continues to thrive, serving people with an interest in local history, three quarters of a century after it first opened its doors.

“We get diplomats and all sorts coming here,” says Kahvedjian. “Former [US] presidents [Bill] Clinton and George W. Bush have copies of my father’s book. And diplomats and wealthy people come here to buy something for people who have everything.”

A rare find, indeed. ■

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