Making space and community through memory:

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the making of space and community in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem, by introducing a collection of photographs from the AGBU Nubar Library in Paris, which were gathered and archived in the 1920s and 1930s. Taking into consideration the multi-layered history of the refugees and orphans who inhabited this place in the post-WWI years and the older presence of Armenian communities and religious institutions in Palestine, it analyses the ways memories act on the making of an Armenian communal space in Jerusalem. A crucial issue raised in this article regards the utilisation historians can make of such a photographic archive from the perspective of constructing a social history of twentieth-century Armenian Jerusalem. More than other available sources, the visual archive brings into partial view the experiences and lives of those who were forgotten or ignored in the post-genocide period, showing how such memories contribute to the melting and merging of segmented pasts within the space of community.