Gignouxphotos are excited to announce an exhibition of Homeland Lost at P21 Gallery in London.
Homeland Lost juxtaposes portraits of Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 and their descendants, shown alongside images of their former homes and villages inside Israel. Taken between 2004 and 2005, Homeland Lost is a poignant and sobering reminder of the human toll of an ongoing conflict which has displaced an estimated 8 million Palestinians and their descendants since 1948.
Originally sponsored by the British Council in East Jerusalem and toured from 2006, this is the first time works from Homeland Lost been shown in the UK since it was exhibited alongside the Palestine Film Festival at the Barbican in 2008. The series will be the subject of a new limited-edition book, publication TBA Spring 2027.
Working with a Hasselblad medium-format camera and black and white film, Gignoux photographed individuals and families living in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. To each person he photographed, Gignoux made a clear and explicit pledge: that he would return to their former homes on their behalf and document what remained. He travelled across Israel to honour that commitment, photographing sites that still bore the traces — or the erasures — of the villages from which they were displaced in 1948. He returned as a witness in their stead, to a homeland they themselves were not permitted to visit, capturing firsthand accounts of the displaced and their descendants of the lasting trauma of losing homeland.
In bringing these images together, Homeland Lost underscores the historical reality behind the Palestinian experience. The meeting of portrait and landscape, together with the stories of displaced Palestinians, reunites people with the places from which they were separated and uses photography as a means of bearing witness to both absence and presence.
In 2026, following the destruction of some 90% of homes and infrastructure in Gaza, in addition to a state of war and instability throughout the region, Homeland Lost has acquired renewed significance as an archival record of displacement and its intergenerational consequences.
Migration, statelessness, and political accountability are some of the most pressing global concerns of our era. Homeland Lost offers a 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 survived: memory, attachment, and the transmission of history across generations.
Homeland Lost, photography by Alan Gignoux, curated by Jenny Christensson, will be showing at P21 Gallery, 21-27 Chalton Street, London NW1 1JD. Click on the links to book.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of events:
“A Knock on the Roof,” play written and performed by Khawla Ibraheem – 2 July at 7 pm
“Writing Homelands,” creative writing workshop led by Laila Sumpton – 4 July from 2.30-4 pm
“Documenting the Ruined Villages of Palestine,” book presentation and in-conversation with Alan Gignoux and Ahmad al-Bazz – 7 July at 6.30pm
“Making Homeland Lost,” panel talk reuniting the people involved in the making of the project – 9 July at 6.30pm
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