Van Leo, Self-Portrait, Wednesday, June 26, 1940 - Vintage print. 2 3/8 × 2 3/8 in. (6 × 6 cm) © Rare Books and Special Collections Library at The American University in Cairo
Becoming Van Leo
15/07/2023 - 05/11/2023
Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd
CA 90024 Los Angeles
hammer.ucla.edu/
Becoming Van Leo is the first international survey of work by the late Armenian Egyptian photographer known as Van Leo, a pseudonym of his own making. Born Levon Boyadjian to Armenian parents in Turkey in 1921, the artist moved to Egypt with his family as a child, eventually settling in Cairo. There he rose to prominence as one of the Arab world’s most celebrated studio photographers from the 1940s to the 1960s. The exhibition traces Van Leo’s career from his earliest encounters with the camera in the 1930s, in which he used friends and family as models, through his experiments in self-portraiture of the 1940s and 1950s, and onward to his studio work, which extended into the 1990s.
Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd
CA 90024 Los Angeles
hammer.ucla.edu/
Becoming Van Leo is the first international survey of work by the late Armenian Egyptian photographer known as Van Leo, a pseudonym of his own making. Born Levon Boyadjian to Armenian parents in Turkey in 1921, the artist moved to Egypt with his family as a child, eventually settling in Cairo. There he rose to prominence as one of the Arab world’s most celebrated studio photographers from the 1940s to the 1960s. The exhibition traces Van Leo’s career from his earliest encounters with the camera in the 1930s, in which he used friends and family as models, through his experiments in self-portraiture of the 1940s and 1950s, and onward to his studio work, which extended into the 1990s.