Ibrahim Abdelfattah Mohamed Ali

Conservator and photographer at the Grand Egyptian museum. Egypt. Since 2010

BA degree in conservation form Cairo University in 2009,

MA from The George Washington University, museum studies program in 2015.

I have been interned at the photograph conservation labs at the Metropolitan museum of art, the National gallery of art, and the Smithsonian national museum of American history NMAH.

MEPPI alumni since 2011. Very interested in the history and preservation of photograph collections in Egypt and the Middle East.

– Currently, working on a project for the preservation of the ministry of antiquities photographic archives.

Heba Hage-Felder

Senior Program Manager at AFAC – Arab Fund for Arts and Culture

Heba Hage-Felder joined AFAC in January 2017 and is responsible for institutional development and management of new initiatives. She has twenty years of experience in development and institutional capacity building. Heba worked with the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs for ten years – first at headquarters in Bern between 2006 and 2011 supporting humanitarian aid and development efforts in the Middle East, and then as director of SDC – the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in Lebanon (2011-2016).  Her work experience between 1996 and 2006 covered initiatives in peace building, youth and community initiatives, production of knowledge resources, as well as eco-tourism. She worked with diverse local and international organisations such as Search for Common Ground in Washington DC and in Jordan, Save the Children in Lebanon, Arab Resource Collective in Lebanon, and UNOPS in Geneva, as well as being a co-founder and volunteer coordinator of Mada – a local NGO in Lebanon.  She has conducted consultancies with UN and international donor agencies. Heba was born in Ghana, raised in West Africa and has lived in several countries including Switzerland. She is fond of discovering diverse artistic works from the region and internationally and personally enjoys writing and visual storytelling.

Heba Farid (1966) is a multidisciplinary artist and cultural manager based in Cairo since 2000, with a background in architecture and fine arts. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally. Since 2004, she has been active in institutional development and cultural research with a focus on photography as a founder of the Contemporary Image Collective (CiC), based in Cairo, an art center dedicated to the visual image, as the coordinator and initiator of the multidisciplinary art/research project about Na’ima al-Misriyya, an early 20th century performer, and as coordinator of the photographic heritage program at CULTNAT, the Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (Bibliotheca Alexandrina). She has participated in and published articles for several regional symposiums on archiving and photographic heritage and curated exhibitions based on the historic photograph collections. She has received several professional trainings in the preservation and management of photograph collections, and is a MEPPI alumni. She is currently adjunct professor of practice in photography at the Department of the Arts, American University in Cairo (AUC), and is embarking on an entrepreneurial startup venture dedicated to the preservation and activation of photograph collections and visual heritage.

Eveline de Weerd

Eveline de Weerd has been involved in the research and monitoring of projects at the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development in the Netherlands since 2009. Based on the principle that culture is a basic need, the Prince Claus Fund’s mission is to actively seek cultural collaborations found on equality and trust, with partners of excellence in spaces where resources and opportunities for cultural expression, creative production and research are limited and cultural heritage is threatened. Eveline has been working for all three programmes of the Fund: Awards, Grants and Collaborations and Cultural Emergency Response (CER). Through her work for the CER programme she is involved in the research and monitoring of projects related to the safeguarding of cultural heritage affected by disaster and conflict globally.

Eveline obtained an MA of Arts in “Euroculture”, an Erasmus-Mundus European Studies Programme, from the University of Groningen and the University of Deusto in Bilbao, and a BA of Arts in “Language and Culture Studies”, with a major in “the History of International Relations” from the University of Utrecht. As part of her BA studies she spent one exchange year in Geneva where she followed courses at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Geneva.

David Knaus has been involved in the visual arts as a patron, collector, curator and Musuem Director since the late 1980’s. His photography collection, broad in scope, includes works of photography and new media from the 19^th through to the 21^st Century and is comprised of over 1,500 objects. Knaus regularly lends and frequently donates objects from his collection to various museums around the world.

He was a founding member of the J. Paul Getty Museum Photographs Council. As well, he is a member of Tate Modern’s Photography Collection Council. In April 2012 he become a founding member of the Photography Initiative at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. As well he has had a long-term interest in and active participation in placing photographers archives at various institutions including the Center for Creative Photography, Stanford University and The Getty Research Institute.  In 2012 he started The Ranch Projects, (theranchprojects.org) which supports both arts publishing and site-specific installations on a 10-acre site in the high desert near Palm Springs, California.  The common thread in Knaus’ involvement in all these institutions and organizations is their education and scholarship-centric programming.

David also serves on the board of Andrea Zittel’s High Desert Test Sites foundation and his private collection has been broadening to include non-photography-based works of contemporary art.  In Late 2011 he became the Managing Director of the Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts in Morocco (mmpva.org)  He was instrumental in forging the first of its kind private-public partnership between the Moroccan Ministry of Culture and the Museum to establish MMP+ at the historic 12^th Century Badii Palace in Marrakech’s old medina.

Cristina Menegazzi

Cristina Menegazzi has been working for more than twenty-five years in the field of cultural heritage, with a focus on collections conservation/preservation, museum practices, project design, policies and strategic research, cultural planning, teams and projects management, and fund raising.

She has a PhD in Disaster Risk Management of Cultural Heritage at the University of Viterbo-Rome, Italy (2010); a M.S. in Preventive Conservation at the Sorbonne University in Paris (1996); an International Master Degree in Management and Conservation (Museums) at the French State school, Institut National du Patrimoine (1994); a M.A. in Contemporary Art and a B.A. in Art History at the University of Bologna, Italy (1991).

She worked four years at the Biennale di Venezia as a research and editorial specialist, five years as a conservation/preservation specialist at ICCROM (the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property), ten years at ICOM (International Council of Museums) in charge of programmes world wide on cultural heritage protection, restoration and conservation, disaster risk management, cultural tourism, use of new technologies, illicit traffic of cultural heritage, intangible heritage and others. She was responsible for setting up ICOM’s long term Museums Emergency Programme (MEP).

She works with UNESCO since 2010. She has been Consultant in Disaster Risk Management for the World Heritage Centre at UNESCO and has been the Coordinator of the Second UNESCO World Forum on Culture and Cultural Industries in 2010 and 2011. She was in charge of a special project at UNESCO World Heritage Centre for the preservation of the World Heritage site of Pompeii in 2012 and 2013. She contributed to the UN/World Bank/European Union Strategy for post disaster needs assessment (PDNA). She is currently in charge of the European Union funded programme on the Emergency Safeguarding of the Syrian Cultural Heritage, based au UNESCO Beirut office.

She has an intense consultancy and academic activity in teaching Preventive Conservation, Disaster Risk Management, Museology, Museum Management, International Project Management and Fund Raising, at many Institutions and Universities in Europe (Milan, Turin, Barcelona, Paris, Nice…), at the French Institut National du Patrimoine, at the Institut Euro-Méditerranéen en Science du Risque, at the French Institut national de l’audiovisuel, at the IBRAM (Institute for Museums in Brazil), for the African World Heritage Foundation and at Lebanese Universities.

She is a member of the French Committee of ICOMOS (International Committee on Monuments and Sites) and expert member of its International Scientific Committee for Risk Preparedness (ICORP); of the French Committee of ICOM and its International Committee for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP); of the French Committee of the Blue Shield (CFBB); of the Italian Commissione Grandi Rischi; of the Pool of Experts of the European Museum Academy

Clémence Cottard Hachem

Head of Collections at The Arab Image Foundation

Clémence Cottard Hachem is the Head of Collections at the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut. She holds an M. A. in Fine Arts, Philosophy of Art from the University of  Paris I La Sorbonne and an M.A. in Curatorial Studies and Art Criticism from the USJ.

Specialized in 19th-century’s photographic techniques, her research focuses on the reception of images produced at that time. While working on issues related to digitization and reproductivity of such photographic materials, Cottard extended her scope of research to digital practices and digital imagery in cultural institutions.

Cottard has collaborated with museums in France such as  the Grand Palais or the Jeu de Paume and she is, since 2012, devoted to conserving and studying private and institutional Lebanese photographic collections such as the Fouad Debbas Collection. Co-founder of Nabû in 2014, she develops digitial tools adapted to the promotion of culture and heritage.

Charbel Saad is the Collection Manager at the Arab Image Foundation. Together with the Head of Collections, he oversees the work on collections held within the care of the Foundation, specifically the preservation, digitization and documentation of the photographs, and animates internal projects related directly to this material. He holds a BA in Graphic Design and Visual Communication from the Lebanese University in Furn El-Shebbek.