The Sony Gallery for Photography

The Third Citizen
A conversation with Van Leo
Akram Zaatari

Like many of his generation who fled to settle in multiethnic society of Egypt in the early twentieth century, Van Leo's family escaped the genocide and relocated first in Alexandria, then Cairo in 1930. His practice spanned for over fifty years that crossed a major chapter in Egypt's history. He is a very special character indeed. I was struck first by his self-portraits, especially one in which he appears as a prisoner. The photograph looked very modern to me even if it was taken produced in 1944. When I saw him for the first time in 1998, I couldn't but notice how we age.

For the very few who had the chance to talk to Van Leo informally, it was quite common to hear him use the term "third Egyptian" to signify himself. To answer my inquiry about the meaning of this expression, Van Leo explained, in a simplified way that may sound almost naïve but still true, that the first Egyptians are the Moslem majority who owns most of the privileges in the country. After that, come the second Egyptians, the Copts, then the third Egyptians, which is a category for everybody else including Armenians such as Van Leo. He was famous only within particular circles of artists and people in the entertainment industry.

Going through the political and demographic changes in Egypt during the last fifty years added to Van Leo's bitterness and sense of insecurity that caused his isolation and sense of hesitation. One of the earliest images that he recalls was an image of being chased by the kids in the schoolyard because he'd picked the sponge from the top of a tree.

Akram Zaatari: You are renowned as a portraitist; indeed, you may be one of few photographers in Arab history, to consider photography as art. How did an Armenian kid named Levon Boyadjian become Van Leo?

Van Leo: I was born in Turkey, in 1921, a couple of years after the genocide. My father had been working for Baghdad Railways. He met a lot of people who were fleeing their villages, taking to the mountains to escape. That's how he met my mother. A friend of his convinced him to marry one of the women he met, to save her. He liked her, so they were married. There was no priest, no wedding reception-just an empty room. And that's how they got married: in an empty room, by the light of a gas lamp. I was three years old when we moved to Egypt. We went first to Alexandria, then to Cairo, before we settled in Zagazig. My father was hired as an accountant at a tobacco company called Gamsaragan. In Zagazig, I was known to be a difficult child and had to change schools three times. I had long hair, and people used to ask whether I was a boy or a girl. [He laughs] I've never gone back to Zagazig. But the place is carved into my memory. I can still see it now. There was a casino by the Nile, where my father used to take us on Sundays. I also remember seeing the French circus, when it came to town. Anyway, Gamsaragan was closing down, and my father was transferred to Eastern Company, another tobacco business, just outside Cairo. So we went to Cairo-first to Faggala, and then downtown. My father worked at Eastern Company for the rest of his life.

AZ: Did you speak Armenian at home?

VL: Yes, but everybody spoke Turkish when older family members came by-most Armenians of my father's generation spoke Turkish. I was only a boy, but I understood some of what they said about the genocide. My father used to speak seven languages: German, French, English, Arabic, Greek, Turkish, and Armenian. He used to speak Greek at the grocery store, when we were still in Zagazig.

AK: How did you become interested in photography?

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AZ: At the beginning of your career, you were your own most frequent subject.

VL: That's right. I took something like five hundred self-portraits between 1942 and 1946. I would look into the mirror and decide on the frame, the composition, the lighting. I was free to try anything-that's not always the case with clients! And I was young, willing to take risks, to experiment. I wanted to explore different ways of lighting the face, and I was fascinated by the way you could change its features just by lighting it differently. And with props, of course.

AZ: What was your clientele like in those days?

VL: Oh, I photographed thousands of people. Sometimes I would take a single picture, but if someone's face inspired me, I might take ten or more. Once I photographed a beggar, a guy who used to come in and offer me a flower as a way of asking for a few coins. I liked his face. I thought he was a dignified beggar, so I called his portrait "The Beggar Philosopher." Even when I was taking pictures of people for money, there were still times when I took pictures purely for pleasure. You know, some photographers used to run after kings or presidents-they considered it a privilege to photograph famous people like that. And they knew it would help their careers. I didn't run after anyone. I just photographed whoever came by.

AZ: How do you make a great portrait?

VL: First, I study the face. You have to light it properly, and decide on a point of view. Then comes the decisive moment, when you take the picture: the expression has to be just so. After that, there's the lab work, which has to be done flawlessly. That's why I have never allowed anyone to help me print a photograph.

AZ: Who owns the portrait?

VL: When clients pay for a portrait, they are really paying for a print. So the client owns that print, of course. And it's the photographer's right to exhibit a successful portrait in his window-with the client's permission, of course. So in some sense, a portrait belongs to both the photographer and the client. But the negative is the property of the studio, no matter what. The negative never leaves the studio-and that's written on their receipt. I never sell my negatives. Once, a client who had brought a woman to my studio asked me for the negatives of her portrait. He was prepared to pay any price. But I refused to give them to him-they weren't for sale. He was insistent. So I fetched the negatives, and I burned them there at my desk, right in front of his eyes. That was the only possible solution. He was so relieved! He came close to me and kissed my forehead.

AZ: Why is it so important to hold on to your negatives?

VL: Listen: photographers have to make a living from their work. And keeping the negative is the only way to ensure that clients will return to the studio when they need a copy of a photograph. Sometimes they don't even have their original-they only have the date, or the number on the back of the photo. But I always keep the negatives, so I can always make a new print, even after many decades have passed.

AZ: Tell me something about retouching-is that a big part of the process?

VL: Well, it depends on the size and the quality of the print. In the past, photographers used to employ specialists, who got paid by the piece. And they got good money, too: it cost five cents to get a passport photo done, and ten cents for a postcard-size photo, but retouching a wedding photograph could cost as much as fifty cents. I do my own retouching-not to save money, really, I prefer to do it myself to insure the perfection of the work. The tools come in grades like needles; some for retouching prints others for the negatives. We used to import them from Czechoslovakia. They're usually used to retouch white spots on the print; you select the size depending on the size of the spot. On the other hand, some prints don't need retouching at all. When I see a print, I know immediately whether or not it needs retouching. Look at my portrait of the writer Taha Hussein-it was enlarged without any retouching at all. Nubar's profile was enlarged with no retouching at all. They say that photography is painting with light. Which means that you define the features of a face by the light that you project on it. If you do that well, you won't need to retouch it.

AZ: Many photographers of your generation were interested in nude photography. Were you ever interested in the nude?

VL: Yes. I took hundreds of nude portraits. But I don't have any of them anymore. I burned them all ten years ago, because of the fundamentalists. I knew that having those negatives around could get me in trouble.

AZ: Was it difficult to persuade clients to undress?

VL: Well, it's never easy to be naked in front of a camera. You worry about the image becoming public, you worry about blackmail. There's something personal about nude photographs; they represent very intimate moments. As a photographer, you have to know your client well before you ask her to be photographed nude. Otherwise, there's no way she'll accept. All the nudes I did were of people I knew very well. All of them except for one: there was this Egyptian woman from Heliopolis, about twenty-five years old, and she wanted me to do a series of portraits. As I was taking the photographs, she started undressing until she was totally naked. I didn't know anything about her-I didn't even know what she did for living. But she was the only one I didn't know, the only person who ever asked to be photographed in the nude.

AZ: Did you ever do nude portraits of men?

VL: No, but I often photographed male athletes, and those pictures always highlighted their bodies, and muscles.

AZ: What about yourself-did you ever do nude self-portraits?

VL: No! [indifferent] I just wasn't interested.

AZ: If you had to do it all over again, would you still become photographer?

VL: No. I mean, I love my work. But the problem is that a photographer will never become a rich man. A talented businessman can get rich in a couple of years, but it's not like that for a talented photographer. I've spent fifty years in this studio, and what do I have to show for it? Very little. You see, photography isn't really respected in the East. Clients just drop in without making an appointment. And most of them only want small prints-six centimeters by nine centimeters. They say, "I'll enlarge it if I like it." They pay fifty cents or a pound. How can photography thrive in such conditions? Imagine if you had a client who came to you, confident of your talent, and offered you fifty or a hundred pounds in advance! If a client did that, the result would be a masterpiece, I assure you. But clients don't usually have the confidence to pay in advance. No one wants a nice, big portrait-not until someone dies. Then the whole family comes running to you, clutching a passport photograph-a stamped passport photograph, sometimes-asking for a big enlargement. [Angry] This is how people think here! If I lived in Canada, I would be a millionaire. At least people over there know the difference between fine art and a passport photo.

AZ: But I thought you said you weren't interested in running after money.

VL: Well, yes. In photography, you have to choose between money and art. And most of the work I've exhibited has been done for free, for my own satisfaction. Look at my pictures of the pyramids, for example. I used to go to the Mina House hotel every Sunday, just to photograph the pyramids. Do you think I took those photographs for money? That was purely for art. When I worked at studio Venus, owned by Artinian, he used to have a fixed set for the lights and the camera. He hardly moved them. He never worked on the shades, and lights, so his photographs were kind of uniform. I move the lights and camera for every customer, imagine!

AZ: You've lived in Cairo over seventy years-your studio on 26th of July street was open for almost 50 years. How has the city changed in that time?

VL: You know, when I first moved here, this neighborhood used to look like part of Europe. Jewish merchants owned the most prestigious shops, and the Armenians worked as craftsmen; jewelers or tailors. There were some rich Armenians, too. Like Nassibian, who had a monopoly on European photography equipment. He had a shop on Fouad Street and a film studio in Faggala. He lived like a king, with a Berber driver and a Cadillac. But he left Egypt long ago. In fact, most of the big businessmen left Egypt in the fifties. In 1952, the whole downtown area burned down-my studio was nearly destroyed, as well. The jewelry shop downstairs burned down, and so did a lot of other businesses. After that came the revolution, and then the Suez crisis, and all the wars with Israel. There was no such thing as normal life! I stayed in Egypt because of my studio-that was the only thing that kept me from leaving. Now, I think maybe I was wrong. The Greeks, the Italians, and the Jews all sold whatever they owned and left. The Jews were the first to leave. We have an expression here: "A country without Jews is a country without wealth." My father had managed to save some money by buying some shares in the stock market. With Nationalization, they were all confiscated by Nasser's government. I have to admit, I'm not sure whether Nasser went to war against Israel, or against everybody including us Egyptians. But I love this country, and I got used to living here.

AZ: What do you think will happen to this studio?

VL: I don't really care anymore. I think I'm finished. In fact, I think I should have stopped working ten years ago. You know, a cousin of mine in Lebanon wrote me recently, inviting me to go and live there. But I didn't respond. I'd rather stay here, I suppose.

AZ: What do you think of photography today?

VL: Photography is dead, thanks to color photography and video. Nobody goes to a studio to have his or her photo taken. It's just like tailoring: nowadays, everyone buys readymade clothes, and hundreds of tailors are unemployed. But I believe photography is immortal. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a photographer. People love new clothes, and yet they go out of fashion, or deteriorate. A picture still looks great after seventy years. Look at this photograph of me as a seven-year-old boy-there's no way I could remember that I posed this way, or that I wore so or so, without this photograph. A photograph is evidence.

This interview first appeared in Tanstion Magazine, Issue 91.