Van Leo

Van Leo (born Levon Alexander Boyadjian; November 20, 1921 – March 18, 2002) was an Armenian-Egyptian photographer who became known for his numerous self-portraits and portraits of celebrities of his time.

Born in November 1921 in the Ottoman Empire, Van Leo grew up during an era of Armenian genocide and persecution and had to flee with his family at the age of 4 to take refuge in Egypt.

It was only due to his father's privileged social position as a worker for a German-owned Baghdad railway Company that Levon and his family escaped the genocide in the Ottoman Empire.

It was at the English Mission College, around the age of 16 or 17, after having bought Hollywood postcards of famous film star that Levon discovered his interest in photography.

Fascinated by Hollywood and the world of cinema, Levon decided to put his studies on hold, after having been enrolled in the American University in Cairo in 1940 to pursue his passion.

One condition maintained for Van Leo's free work was that a visible credit would be shown under each photograph and as such his name became associated with the celebrities.

Besides portraits, Leon also invested in photographing antiquities like the Pyramids of Giza, famous mosques in Cairo, ruins in Luxor, and touristic sites in Paris, Rome, and Vienna.

Not only did he control the set, the surroundings, and the lighting, but he also mastered the angles of his shots, the poses, the expressions, and was known for being self-sufficient and independent in his work, and in that way was compared to a painter.

[2] It has been argued that Van Leo's collection is a documentation of Egyptian society over the last fifty years and has been called an artist for turning his photography into art.

In 2018, the Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University hosted an exhibition featuring his self portraits entitled Van-Leo: The Reluctant Surrealist[7] which was accompanied by the catalog published by the same title.