Friday, 14 August, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Home Away From Home is a multi-media project juxtaposing recorded oral histories (in English) with portraits from the San Francisco Bay Area Palestinian community, second largest in the U.S. The viewer will be able to hear the voice while looking into the (photographed) face of the person telling their story.
Essentially, the project explores the question “What does it mean to be Palestinian in America?” About two dozen members of this community describe how and why they maintain ties to and aspirations for their homeland Palestine, and how they reconcile this with life in a country whose political culture is so profoundly hostile to those aspirations.
Scan the QR code with your phone to listen to the audio.
Meet the Artist
Najib Joe Hakim works as a freelance photographer and photojournalist in San Francisco. His work has been published in national and international magazines and newspapers. He has won numerous awards including Best Photo Essay from the CA Newspaper Publishers Assoc., 1st Prize in the Luminance Exhibition 2012 (NYC), top ten photo projects of 2008 by Social Documentary Network. He was also a nominee for the US Artist Fellowship and enjoyed a fellowship at the Rayko Photo Center in 2011.His current personal project: Home Away from Home: Little Palestine by the Bay exhibited in San Francisco Nov. 2014. Juxtaposing recorded oral histories with B&W portraits, the project explores how Palestinians in the SF Bay Area maintain ties to their homeland while living in a country whose political culture abhors their personal aspirations. The viewer will be able to hear the voice of the person while looking into their photographed eyes. Link: http://electronicintifada.net/content/palestinian-america-najib-joe-hakims-home-away-home/14073. This project follows his Born Among Mirrors in which Hakim portrayed his own family’s journey from Palestine to the United States. Born Among Mirrors has been exhibited in galleries on both coasts including the Jerusalem Fund Gallery. Parts of the project can be viewed at: http://socialdocumentary.net/photographer/Najib%20Joe%20Hakim. In conjunction with Mirrors, he co-produced with Laurie Coyle a ten minute video about the experience of the Hakim family, called Cooking Lessons: A Palestinian American Story, which can be seen at: http://vimeo.com/31985970. He is a graduate of Georgetown University’s Masters Program in Contemporary Arab Studies, as well as the Thunderbird School of Global Management. He obtained his BA from the University of Virginia, after which he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for two years.
