Fifty One Shades of Kegham

Written by Aya Aboshady

Photographer: MOHAMED MUSTAFA MUSHU Art Director & Stylist: SOLYMA DARWISH Production: NADINE KETCHEDJIAN & AHMED HICHAM Hair Stylist: FARES EL HAWARY Location: PHOTOPIA

Jewelry: AZZA FAHMY Headdress & Scarf: HERMES Sunglasses: MYKITA X DAMIR DOMA

hy be one thing when you can be the best at everything all at once? Kegham Djeghalian is a living example of how it’s perfectly possible to follow your dreams and pursue every single W passion you have and still be the best at what you do! Djeghalian is an art director, image maker and visual artist whose unique background is unlike any other in his field. Being an Armenian Palestinian born and raised in Egypt and having lived in the capital of fashion Paris, France; Djeghalian’s unique persona has a very special edge to it that instantly draws you in and leaves you with the eagerness to know more about everything from his background story to his flourishing career and future plans. The exceptional artist has both studied and taught in several institutions, such as L’Institut Français de la Mode, the American University in Cairo, Goldsmiths College University of London, London College of Fashion and Paris College of Art. His work was internationally exhibited in group and solo shows with four of his shoots winning international awards. His collaborators include Kenzo, Louboutin, Hermès, Okhtein, MajaS and more! We had the opportunity to chat with him about his world and get inside the mind that created all the artistic wonders that are Kegham Djeghalian’s works.

KEGHAM: THE ARTIST AND CURATOR PHOTO KEGHAM OF GAZA: UNBOXING

Being the grandson of the first photographer in Gaza, the name isn’t the only thing Kegham inherited. Needless to say, the passion for art and image-making is on top of the list.

Kegham of Gaza was a toddler survivor of the 1915 Armenian genocide, years after moving between Syria, Palestine, and several different jobs; he got married and settled in Gaza where he established the first photography studio in the city “Photo Kegham” in 1944.

It’s safe to say that the majority of Gaza residents at that time were photographed by him in different contexts and events, not to mention how he supported and mentored aspiring photographers as well.

All of that and more inspired his grandson Kegham Djeghalian to achieve the dream of making his grandfather’s photographic legacy truly live on through an outstanding exhibition in Downtown Cairo as part of the Cairo Photo Week, 2021.

Kegham embarked on an exploration journey as he engaged in a wide archival research of his late grandfather, the person and the photographer, and through both he explored the visual history of Gaza.

However, since the greater majority of his photographic archive in Gaza was unattainable to Kegham, he had to count on the three red boxes of negatives his father found forgotten in his closet in 2018, along with some family-owned photo memorabilia, as well as some scattered stories.

Not only this, but Kegham was also so determined to gather every last bit of photographic piece he could get his hands on even if it was a series of screenshots taken from zoom meetings about his grandfather. Which is exactly what happened.

“I had never actually known my grand-father’s real work and I was very eager and curious to explore how he touched the lives and souls of many people and why he stayed engraved in the collective memory of the city of Gaza.”

The process of curating and archiving such a heavy and detailed project was extremely laborious for Kegham and it goes without saying, he really gave it his all; especially that it was too personal and intimate already. In said process, Kegham deliberately decided not to include any captions or dates to the exhibited photos as he aimed for a “raw and human confrontation” with the photographs. He wanted to imbue the work with his own subjectivity and mark his agency as an artist and a grandson instead of presenting the archive formally or academically.

“For me, the notion of disrupted histories was extremely present and it really hit me: the disrupted history of the Armenians, Palestine, Gaza, and my grandfather’s legacy which I’m denied access to, as well as the decades-old negatives decaying.”

He believes this disruption gave so much ambiguity to his project and decided to celebrate it and find his artistic voice through it because as much as this ambiguity is disruptive, it’s also fruitful and productive just as was evident in the exhibition.

Kegham mapped out the narrative of the exhibition through four thematics: The Studio, Gaza Memento, Family Album, and Zoom Call, with the three red boxes being the heroes of the exhibition for obvious reasons.

KEGHAM: THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR & DESIGNER BRAVE NEW WORLD

Being the passionate artist he is; no pandemic lockdown could stop Kegham from creating. That’s why in 2020, when he was approached by the footwear brand Zee with the offer to be the brand’s creative director, he took it and immediately started revamping Zee from a summer footwear brand to an actual brand.

“I wanted to turn Zee into a full-fledged Egyptian brand with its own persona; a brand that has something specific to say rather than just products to offer. In retrospect, I can say that I quite enjoyed the whole process of being the creative director of a commercial brand and handling its whole creative spectrum; from reimagining the brand, setting the narrative, designing, prototyping, creating the campaigns, all the way to communication and strategy…’

Although his job description didn’t involve designing the shoes, Kegham decided to use the lockdown time experimenting and indulging in online tutorials around footwear technical design and patternmaking in order to create Zee’s ‘Brave New World’ collection, definitely upping their summer game.

Both designing the collection and revamping the brand happened in the span of three months - talk about productivity!

“Brave New World is inspired by a world where one dares to move forward. I borrowed the name from Huxley’s dystopian book but I took its literal optimistic connotation. It somehow felt representative of the circumstances we were living in at the beginning of the pandemic and the urge to challenge it all by daring to move forward, embark on new journeys and take risks at times of uncertainty…all of which I’d like to believe I did myself.”

KEGHAM: THE PROFESSOR

Kegham is not only an art director, image maker or visual artist. He’s also a professor and has taught in different universities and institutions.

Ever since he was an AUC student at the age of 19, he’s always been fascinated by the pathway of academia and the role of a creative arts professor in passing on the knowledge and nurturing the artistic skills of students.

His first teaching experience was in 2013 with a styling workshop in Darb 1718 and then in 2014, he began teaching an image making and art direction workshop in Photopia that he still teaches on a yearly basis due to its great success and the sense of creative community it created through the years.

“The art direction workshop at Photopia is an intense creative boot camp that aims to teach methods rather than skills. It is a week of complete immersion; it separates you from reality, opens up channels in your head. We become so close that most of us, including myself, tend to suffer from some sort of ‘withdrawal symptoms’ after the workshop ends. It is the teaching experience that is dearest to my heart.”

In 2016, Kegham was offered a teaching position at the Paris College of Art (PCA) in Paris where he and 6 other faculty members premiered the MA degree in Fashion Film and Photography. And until this day, Kegham is faculty member at PCA.

In 2017, the reputable French Institute of Fashion (l’Institut Francais de la Mode) where Kegham completed his last degree, asked him to be a guest lecturer which he is until now and in 2018, he was asked to be the pedagogic director of the Master of Image Design in Fashion and held the position for two years.

Kegham doesn’t only teach image making and art direction, he also teaches a course titled “Paris Fashion Culture” where he explores the sociology and history behind Paris becoming the capital of Fashion.

Currently, Kegham is about to take on a new job at the German International University (GIU) which is the new entity affiliated with GUC (the German University in Cairo) at the New Capital. He will be teaching a course on the theory of design in the Fashion and Industrial Design department, only he will be tackling the subject from an Egyptian perspective with a focus on the Egyptian design context instead of relying on Western canons of theory.

KEGHAM: THROUGH THE EYES OF HIS STUDENTS THE SHOOT

For this Identity feature, Kegham was styled up and photographed by none other than his own former students, now full-fledged professionals, Mohamed Mustafa (Mushu) and Solyma Darwish as part of a project where they attempted to interpret and portray Kegham the way they see him and to say the least, it was quite accurate. The result was this orientalist partly-nostalgic partly-witty photographic tableaux.

They combined the different layers of Kegham’s very unique and multidimensional persona - from being an Armenian Palestinian yet very Egyptian at heart to being a Parisian to a fashion art director and more through using pieces that perfectly fit the “orientalist” approach, such as the gorgeous jewelry from Azza Fahmy’s Mamluk collection, Kegham’s very own Saeidi galabeya, and of course, the French Hermès carrés worn as headdress and scarf.

“I find that sometimes the way to address and fight the cliché is to overexaggerate it and treat it with excess! They made me embody the very ‘colonial’ and orientalist depiction I try to go against…and I indulged in every bit of it! It’s also interesting because it is relevant to what I will be teaching in the introductory course at GIU, a ‘decolonized’ view of design theory.”

We wonder what comes next in Kegham’s multidisciplinary practice.