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Banner images courtesy of Dan Walsh. 07/02/2009
MAASer Dan Walsh Discusses His Collection of Palestine Poster Art
Gazing at a fine specimen of politically charged Palestinian poster art, most viewers see a potent message delivered with striking aesthetic appeal. Current MAAS student Dan Walsh sees things a little differently.
Through his work gathering and digitally archiving thousands of posters created by Palestinian artists or addressing the subject of Palestine, Dan discovered that the poster art of Palestine could be studied from an ethnographic, rather than strictly aesthetic, perspective—adding a new dimension to how we understand the land and its people.
"I was intrigued by the idea that the poster art of Palestine held some unique qualities that, if understood better, would allow for a discourse that is less anemic and more natural...more nuanced," he said via email.
Dan's first exposure to Palestine poster art came in 1974, when as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco he was encouraged by his language tutor to translate Arabic-language posters around the city.
"By the time I left Morocco, in 1976, I had collected approximately 300 posters printed by, or in solidarity with, the Palestinian liberation movement," he wrote in a 2006 feature for the CCAS website.
From there Dan never looked back, securing a grant with the support of the late Edward Said to turn his collection into a slide show which he then presented at universities and to peace groups and other organizations in the Washington, D.C., area. In 1981 he founded Liberation Graphics, a business devoted to importing, exhibiting, and distributing posters from a variety of left-leaning groups, including the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Nicaragua's Sandinista National Liberation Front.
Since entering Georgetown's MAAS program, Dan has significantly altered the way he approaches Palestine poster art.
"By being able to go deeply into the Palestine poster tradition in the context of an Arab ethnography class or a graduate anthropology class I was for the first time able to comprehend the poster as something other than a work on paper," he said. One particularly powerful lesson for Dan had to do with looking at the posters as a specific way in which people communicate. “Since Palestine posters come from everywhere and in so many languages,” he added, “and since they engage so many artists and allow for so many nuanced points of view, we can safely say it is a global genre."
Dan remains as engaged as ever with the study of Palestine poster art, and his website (www.palestineposterproject.org) functions as the working draft of his MAAS thesis. The site currently features over 500 posters created by over 100 artists—just a slice of the ethnographic work that Dan has found so appealing and fulfilling.
"Posters are such fragile works," he said. "Every once in a while I will acquire a Palestine poster that completes a set, captures a moment, or codifies a position, and when I slip those posters into their logical sequence or finally understand [a] core message...I find those moments gratifying."
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