'ART IS NOT A THING; IT IS A WAY'- E. Hubbard

11.10.2014

Recreating Hamidiyeh: Damascene Traditions Brought to Caput Mundi

     

Sciam, Kouki, & Seta

It doesn’t appear out of place to find Syrian stores and cafés in the old quarters of Rome; a meeting point between East and West in two of the oldest inhabited cities of the world: Rome (aka Caput Mundi) and Damascus (aka 'Pearl of the East'). With the migration of skilled Syrians, Rome welcomed them with open arms in the 1980s to fill a void in the rug industry. Damascenes brought with them the knowledge and techniques of Caucasi (Caucasian) and Tabrizi (Tabriz) rugs, considered to be the most praised in the Middle East. A time of economic boom for Italy, the decorative hand-made floor coverings were in high demand. Rather than invading the market and competing with local artisans, the foreigners provided an unavailable and highly requested competency in distinguishing, repairing, and cleaning of the prized interior luxuries.


Youssef Hallak, a local of Damascus who sold rugs to foreigners in Bab Sharki, is one of the first representative of such individuals. Arriving in 1980, Hallak offered his services to individuals until the opening of his own independent workshop Sciam (pronounced 'Sham') in the artisan district of Rome, in the heart of the old city. Specialized in Eastern rugs, Hallak relied heavily on his Syrian connections. To manage the demand, artisans from Damascus’ Souq al Arwan, named after Byzantine traders, were employed in his bottega on Via del Pelligrino. In fact, these artisans, namely Ziyad Kouki and Samer Hareb, expanded the Damascene tradition to other stores, workshops, and cafés in the old quarter.

With the decline in demand of Caucasi and Tabrizi rugs, Hallak found other ways to bring Syrian handicrafts into the local market by introducing hand-blown glassware from one of the oldest factories right outside the old city walls of Damascus. The slowly rising success encouraged the importation of more glass objects, including light fixtures, sculptures, dishes and vases. Though Italy is itself recognized for its glass making skills, glass-blowing was discovered along the coast of the Mediterranean, in current day Syria, towards the end of the 1st Century BC. In fact, the invention revolutionized the production of glass at the time. Due to its fast and easy process, the products became readily available to the common person for the first time in history. In Syria today, only a few skills glass blowing factories remain. The ancient and traditional art form, a skill handed down from generation to generation, is at risk of being forever destroyed. The appreciation for such objects reached its peak in Rome in 2003. Though the local market seems to have fallen into disinterest, the foreign tourists still show an interest.

After Hallak’s success at opening a restaurant in Old Damascus called Zeituneh, along one of the main streets of the old city called Medhat Bacha towards one of the eight gates of the old city, the eastern gate in the Christian quarter called Bab Sharki; in 2000 he opened up Sciam Café. Taking the place of the rug repair and cleaning area of his store, the interiors were transformed into a Damascene interior with imported wood beam ceilings decorated in the hand-painted ajami technique, hand-blown glass fixtures, hand-sewn Oriental tapestries, and hand-carved wood tables and chairs. The café became an automatic hit among locals and tourists with a continuous demand for typical Syrian teas and flavoured argilehs (hooka).

   

Ziyad Kouki and Samer Hareb, two craftsmen who had their own practice in Souq Al Arwan, like Hallak, came with the skills and will to work hard and independently succeed. The Syrian community in Rome, and Italy as a whole, is quit small; which essentially meant that those who came had to make it on their own with their owns savings and initiatives. Kouki and Hareb demonstrate the Damascene survival method of continuously assessing the local market and adjusting accordingly. With optimism and Syrian charisma of a chatty salesmen; always willing to find whatever words to communicate with customers, whether in German, English, Italian, French or Arabic, they have evolved since their arrival to Rome in the late-1980s.


    

Kouki left Sciam workshop and opened independent activity (Via Dei Coronari 213) selling, repairing, and cleaning valuable old rugs in the famous Via dei Coronari, renown for its famous antiquariati. Around nine years ago, Mohammad Lutfi joined Kouki's rug repair workshop, in order to continue to provide Eastern skills deriving from Damascus' Souq al Arwan. Like Hallak's willingness to adjust and alternate, Kouki expanded his shop across the street to also sell Syrian and

Egyptian hand-blown glassware in a store called, as the first, Kouki. On the same street, only 20 meters away, his daughter Leila also opened a store, appropriately called Leila's (Via dei Coronari 224), that sells, diversely from her father, Murano glass accessories from cute beaded earrings to up-scale jewellery. As the importation of Syrian objects is diminishing, the now rug-man turned local merchant evaluated the European economy and included to his products Turkish Iznik tiles and Murano glass objects, mixing East and West in the once exclusive Caucasi-Tabrizi occupation.


    


Samer Hareb essentially took the same path as Kouki, beginning in Hallak's workshop and going independent. In 2000 he opened his own rug shop, which also sold glassware through the collaboration with his brother living in Damascus, in the artisan street of Via Panico. In the summer of 2014, effectively altering in direction, Hareb opened Via della Seta on Via dei Coronari. From the decoration, the café speaks Old Damascus. In fact, every detail is a reminder of Hareb’s past. Being a proud Damascene from Bab Al Jabeih, Hareb does not leave a moment to remind passer-bys that he is from the oldest inhabited city in the world and personally makes everything on his menu alla Damascena. With the exception of the hand-made kibbeh from a Syrian woman’s kitchen, Hareb wakes up every morning to make his menu ‘fresh’. The quality and distinction of Via della Seta is that the Damascus cuisine is authentically prepared by a Shami, a rare match in itself. Even in Damascus a Damascene is rare, so finding one in Rome cooking food is even more unique. A delishous and quick falafel sandwich, tasty taboubleh, appetizing ouzi, filling kibbeh, etc. are all apart of Via della Seta's alla carte options that will not leave you by any means unhappy.

Grandson of the artist Abu Subhi Al Tinawi,  a Damascene artist whose works are even exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum, Hareb demonstrates his family tree in the hangings of the painted glass artworks of the well-known Abla ou Antar stories. Unlike Hallak and Kouki who continue to rely on Eastern accessories, Hareb intends to continue offering Damascene hospitality and cuisine to his customers, both local and international.



  


The uniqueness of these Syrian immigrants is their ability to recreate their past in a new continent. Though they have unquestionably integrated well into the city they now call home for over the past two decades, they remain faithful and proud of their origins, always finding new ways to bring Syria to Rome and to its tourists. As their stores and business adjust to the economic changes of the local market, they have not lost their Syrian touch of hospitality, always offering tea and chit-chat to clients, showing customer recognition, even to the little spenders, and continuously yelling out ‘ciao habibi’ to the locals and neighbours passing by the store-front.



Sciam Cafe

Via del Pellegrino, 55
00186, Rome
Tel/Fax: +39-6-68308957
Cell.: +39-3337333817
www.facebook.com/pages/Sciam

Kouki

Via dei Coronari, 213
00186, Rome
Tel: +39-6-6896704
Mobile: +39-3403530499
www.caucasianrug.com

La Via Della Seta

Via dei Coronari, 143
Tel: +39-6-68307438
Cell: +39-3356588553
www.facebook.com/viadellasetaroma

Image Sources:
On-site: November 2014 by S. Sultagi
www.tripadvisor.com

10.22.2014

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Father of Photojournalism

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), a French photographer, is labelled as the father of photojournalism, a master of candid, unbiased, photography along with being considered one of the most important portrait photographers of the 20th century. He is accredited with promoting the development or the so-called ‘street photography’ that relied on life reportage of un-staged scenes that greatly, if not directly, influenced following generations of photographers. In fact, Henri spent over thirty years on assignment for Life Magazine and other journals. He travelled and visually documented some of ‘the greatest upheavals of the 20th century’ taking him to a vast variety of locations in period of important civil movements; including the Spanish civil war, the liberation of Paris in 1944, the 1968 Paris student rebellion, the Chinese fall of Kuomintang, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union after the Stalin’s death, the United States during the post WWII boom and phases of Europe’s entrance into ‘modernity’. His way with the camera, an almost exclusive alliance with a Leica 35 mm range-finder, became the first Western photographer to openly and freely take to the streets of the post-war Soviet Union.


Henri observed the realities of his time, presenting the periods of change in an honest and direct form to the Western public. Ironically, he disliked being photographed, considering it an invasion of personal space, of individual privacy. However, his flash-less black and white images, allowed for future photographers to reach a broader audience through the medium of public publications, such as Life Magazine. His use of the lens created a new potential benefits of images that captured the impartial and sincere, un-staged and unbias.


Henri’s first photojournalist assignment was published in 1937 as he documented the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth for the French weekly Regards. Unlike the typical image of royalty, Henri chose to uniquely record the images of the public, the ‘adoring subjects lining the streets of London'. However, Henri’s monumental achievement that brought him international recognition took place in 1948 for his coverage of Ghandi’s funeral and in the following year for his photographs of the first six months of Maoist People’s Republic.

The son of five children of a bourgeois French family had the financial support of his parents to develop his interest with photography which initiated as a young boy and a Box Brownie camera. Though his artistic beginnings began with a failed attempt at music, Henri turned to the brush under the influence of his uncle, a gifted painter. It was not until 1927 during his entrance at Lhote Academy in the studio of the Cubist painter and sculptor André Lhote that exposed Henri to the world of the classical and the modern, in art and literature, that provided him with the necessity and regulations to train the eye to ‘photography without a camera’. Lhote’s ‘rule-laden’ confronted Henri with the lessons to resolve artistic and compositional problems important in the production of ‘art’.

The Surrealist movement, founded in 1924, was a main turning point in his early education. Though he never became an official member, he did attend and participate in group meetings that formed his ideologies revolving around theories of the subconscious and the immediate. 

After his affair with Caresse Crosby ended in 1931, Henri parted to a drastic trip to the Ivory Coast. Even though his stay was cut short due to his contact with blackwater fever, which almost killed him, the few remaining photographs taken demonstrate his early talent.

In 1932 Carmel Snow of Harper’s Bazaar offered Henri an assignment which was not exactly considered to be a strategic move on behalf of the photographer but gave him his first American publication. While in New York for the shooting, he met Paul Strand who introduced Henri to filming which brought him to be involved in a variety of projects, even taking him to documenting the Spanish civil war in the interest of anti-fascism.

When WWII broke out, Henri joined the French Army in the Film and Photo unit. After being captured by Germans in 1940, his escape encouraged his choice to join the underground movement to cover the Occupation and Liberation of France in 1943. At the end of the war, he was asked by the American Office of War Information to document Le Retour (The Return) of French prisoners and displaced persons. The images offer a dramatic and realistic reality of the results of war and how the innocent civilians are treated and ‘cured’ on their way through DDT praying, finger printing, and form filling.


In 1948 Henri, along with Robert Capa, David Seymour, William Vandivert and George Rodger, founded Magnum Photos, a cooperative picture agency whose mission was to ‘feel the pulse’ of the times and to serve humanity through the publication to a wide audience. In 1952 Henri published his first individual book The Decisive Moment with a cover drawn by Henri Matisse. 
In 1966 he withdrew from Magnum to transform his artistic direction to portraiture and landscapes, changing route from his prior interests that took him to documentary assignments across the globe. By the 1970s his camera was practically retired, with the exception of a few portraits, and to reinventing his early career with the brush.

Henri’s photographic oeuvre demonstrates the life of an extraordinary individual who chose to document the ‘reality’ of his time, presenting the West with the bluntness of modernity, a combination of victories and defeats, wealth and starvation, happiness and depression in a period of historical change. Opposing the traditional trend applied to the camera as a tool for propaganda and fashion, Henri brought the machine a widely popular and interesting application, an authentic eye to and of the masses, breaking the taboo on the denied existence of the cruel and undeniable truths that impacted the majority presented in magazines and on film.


Bibliography:

‘Henri Cartier-Bresson’ in Wikiedia online, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Cartier-Bresson
‘Biography’ in Henri Carier Bresson Organization, http://www.henricartierbresson.org/hcb/HCB_bio00_en.htm
‘Henri CartierBresson: The Modern Century’ in Museum of Modern Arthttp://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/968
‘Henri Cartier-Bresson biography’ in Biographyhttp://www.biography.com/people/henri-cartier-bresson-9240139
Assouline, P. (2005). Henri Cartier-Bresson: A Biography. London: Thames & Hudson.
Galassi, Peter (2010). Henri Cartier-Bresson: the Modern Century. London: Thames and Hudson 
Montier, J. (1996). Portrait: First Sketch. Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art (p. 12). New York: Bulfinch Press.
Warren, J (2005), Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography. Routledge

Image Links:

http://mediastore4.magnumphotos.com/
http://erickimphotography.com/
http://i1192.photobucket.com/
http://www.jacksonfineart.com/
https://webbnorriswebb.files.wordpress.com
https://webbnorriswebb.files.wordpress.com
http://www.henricartierbresson.org/
http://thispublicaddress.com/
http://www.sfmoma.org/
http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL53ZMYN