A Sketch of Manners
by Jumana Manna
Summary
Alfred Roch, Jaffa’s biggest landowner and member of the Palestinian National League, was a politician with a bohemian panache. In 1942, at the height of WWII, he threw what turned out to be the last masquerade ball in Palestine. Inspired by an archival photograph taken the event,A Sketch of Mannersrecreates and reimagines an unconventional bon vivant aspect of Palestine’s lost pre-1948 past. A multilayered work that reflects on the history of photography, notions of modernity within the region, and the role of artifice and farce in society.
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