Gil Pasternak: curator of Voices from Our Photo Albums

Gil Pasternak curates a digital photographic public display in one of the British sovereign base areas in Cyprus.

On 27 October 2019 the photographic display Voices from Our Photo Albums opened to the public in the village of Akrotiri, located within one of the British Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus. The occasion signified the culmination of community engagement activities that Pasternak carried out in Akrotiri earlier that month, which were facilitated by archaeologist Mireya González Rodríguez from the University of Leicester (UK). Having digitised family albums of members of the local community, they established a photographic digital heritage archive capable of encouraging members of the British and Cypriot communities to engage in inter-communal explorations of their mutual influence. As well as demonstrating the value of family photographs as socio-culturally informative historical sources, the display was designed as an interactive social means to enthuse more members of the community to join the project and develop the archive. With approximately one hundred individuals visiting the space on the opening day, the display proved to have been a great success.