Khalil Raad

Khalil Raad was a photographer, born in Bhamdoun in Mount Lebanon, who worked in Jerusalem and died in 1957. Over some fifty years he photographed political events and daily life across Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. His photographs survive as glass plates, negatives and postcards.

He learned photography in Jerusalem under the Armenian photographer Garabed Krikorian and also trained in Switzerland before the First World War. In 1890 he opened his own studio on Jaffa Road, at first in competition with his former teacher; the two studios later entered a partnership.

His archive of more than 1,230 glass plates, postcards and negatives was rescued during the 1948 war and is held by the Institute for Palestine Studies. Prints of Ottoman soldiers from the First World War are held by the Middle East Centre, University of Oxford. In 2025 the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, in partnership with the Institute for Palestine Studies, presented Not Just Memory: Khalil Raad and the Contemporary Gaze.