Family Photo Salon With Kegham Djeghalian Jr.
Family Photo Salon With Kegham Djeghalian Jr.
Bring a family photograph and join a conversation about memory, family and belonging.
Together with Palestinian-Armenian artist Kegham Djeghalian Jr., we invite Palestinian and Gazan participants to gather around family photographs and explore the stories, people, places and memories they carry.
The Family Photo Salon at Ruq’ah is part of a series of three intimate gatherings organised by FOMU, Ruq’ah and Disarming Design in Antwerp and Brussels.
About the Family Photo Salons
From 5 February 2027, FOMU, Fotomuseum Antwerp presents Photo Kegham of Gaza.
Kegham Djeghalian Sr. (1915–1981), an Armenian Genocide survivor who settled in Gaza, founded the city's first professional photography studio, Photo Kegham, in 1944. For nearly four decades, he photographed Gaza, its people and everyday life.
In the exhibition, his grandson, artist Kegham Djeghalian Jr., reactivates what remains of this photographic legacy to explore family, memory, place and displacement, while unfolding an intimate, non-linear reading of Gaza's histories.
As part of this project, FOMU and Kegham Djeghalian Jr. are organising Family Photo Salons, small gatherings where Palestinian and Gazan participants come together around their own family photographs and the stories they hold.
What to expect
During the two-hour salon, participants will be invited to share and talk about their photographs, the family stories behind them and the memories they hold.
Kegham Djeghalian Jr. will guide the conversation and think together with the group.
There is no preparation required, and there is no right or wrong way to talk about a photograph. The conversation is open and informal. We might talk about a person in an image, a place, a family story, an everyday moment, a memory, or simply what a photograph means to you today.
What photographs can I bring?
You are invited to bring 1–3 family photographs that are meaningful to you. They can be printed or digital, old or recent, and may show people, places, celebrations or everyday moments in Palestine or Gaza.
You can bring photographs whose stories you know well, but also images whose stories have been partly forgotten or remain unknown.
You are also very welcome to participate without bringing a photograph.
Practical information
Practical information
Who: Palestinian and Gazan participants
Date: Sunday, 8 November 2026
Time: 14:00–16:00
Location: Ruq’ah, Rue de Laeken 157, 1000 Brussels
Capacity: 8–12 participants
Language: The main language will be Arabic. Participants are also welcome to speak English or French.
Registration is required.
Register for the Family Photo Salon
Participants can choose between the three Family Photo Salons in Antwerp and Brussels directly
Other Family Photo Salons
Friday, 6 November, 19:00–21:00
FOMU, Waalsekaai 47, 2000 Antwerp
Saturday, 7 November, 14:00–16:00
Disarming Design Studio, Zaterdagplein 13, 1000 Brussels
Sunday, 8 November, 14:00–16:00
Ruq’ah, Rue de Laeken 157, 1000 Brussels
Participants can choose whichever location suits them best.
Documentation and consent
The conversations will be audio and video recorded to document and archive these encounters.
A camera positioned above the table will record the photographs, hands and gestures around them, while the conversation will be recorded through sound. Participants may also choose to speak to the camera or show their face if they wish.
By registering for the Family Photo Salon, you agree to the documentation of the session and the possible use of the recordings as described above. On the day of the salon, we will go through the consent form together, and each participant will be asked to sign it before the session begins.
The recordings may be edited into an audiovisual work or another form of documentation to be presented as part of the Photo Kegham of Gaza exhibition at FOMU.
Photographs brought by participants will be shared during the salon but will not be collected.
About Kegham Djeghalian Jr.
Kegham Djeghalian Jr. is a Palestinian-Armenian visual artist and creative director based between Cairo and Paris. His practice unfolds across image-making, visual culture, archival practices and fashion.
For more than a decade, a central inquiry within his practice has developed through Photo Kegham of Gaza, an ongoing engagement with the precarious photographic legacy of his grandfather, Kegham Djeghalian Sr., founder of Photo Kegham.
Through activating and rereading these surviving photographic fragments, Djeghalian explores the unmade archive, affective historiography, and the ways images can produce, unsettle and reclaim histories.