Homeland Lost

Created between 2004 and 2005, Homeland Lost was an exhibition that juxtaposed portraits of Palestinian refugees and exiles with images of the places they fled or were forced to leave in 1948, during the war that led to the creation of the state of Israel. The exhibition toured to locations in the Middle East and Europe between 2006 and 2011. Learn more

Nearly twenty years on, Homeland Lost has acquired renewed significance as an archival record of displacement and its intergenerational consequences; this has prompted Alan Gignoux to make the work more widely available in the form of a photobook. At a time when migration, statelessness, and historical accountability remain pressing global concerns, the project offers a careful, human-centred documentation of lives shaped by forced rupture and sustained by enduring ties to place. The portraits draw attention not only to what was lost, but to what has persisted: memory, attachment, and the transmission of history across generations. Considering the recent war in Gaza, marked by extensive civilian casualties and large-scale displacement, Homeland Lost is situated within a continuing historical framework in which dispossession and survival remain defining realities.

The forthcoming photobook will expand the project’s scope, presenting the full archive of 177 portraits and 81 villages alongside maps and a newly commissioned essay by a Palestinian writer. Together, these elements reposition Homeland Lost as both an artistic undertaking and a significant historical resource, contributing to broader conversations around representation, human rights, and the visual narrativization of displacement.