Safeguarding South Lebanon: Urgent Digitization and Documentation of the Soussi Collection

The Soussi Collection is comprised of 450 items including medium format negatives, glass plates, and positives on paper. The collection heralds from Studio Soussi in the city of Saida, South Lebanon. Owned and run by Chafic El Soussi (1920-2003) along with his brother Anis El Soussi, the collection spans from the 1950s-1970s, serving as a testament of the personal and collective history of Saida, a city that has been one of the vessels of Lebanon’s shifting identity and political upheavals, even up to this day. A selection of the most fragile negatives was previously digitized in 2021 within a UCLA MEAP grant. We seek to digitize the remainder of the collection as we face another urgency, under the threats of war, instability, and failing infrastructure in Lebanon. The collection will also undergo a review of their physical condition as they have been exposed to periods with irregular electrical supply and reverberations from nearby airstrikes.

The collection is particularly relevant today as we grapple with the current state of geopolitics of the region. It is set in South Lebanon and captures pivotal political and social moments in the early years following Lebanese independence (1943) and the Nakba (1948).