What stories are hidden in the archives of photo studios? What can studio photographs reveal about the life paths, dreams, and hopes of the individuals portrayed? These are some of the questions raised by the history of Studio Rex.
The photo studio was located at the heart of Belsunce, Marseille’s working-class neighborhood. Assadour Keussayan arrived in the city at the age of 17 and founded the studio in 1933. He was a survivor of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey, while his wife Varsenik, hailed from Cyprus. Thanks to her help and that of his children, Grégoire and Germaine, the studio was a family-run business which served as a meeting point for migrants from northern and western Africa as well as other countries. The studio closed in 2018. About ten years ago, French collector Jean- Marie Donat acquired a large part of the studio‘s extensive archive of tens of thousands of photographs and photo negatives taken there between 1966 and 1985. It was a trove preserving personal memories and historical events.
C/O Berlin is the first to display a significant part of this archive in Germany, inviting a dialogue between Africa and Europe, as well as between personal and collective memory and forgetting across past and present…
