Curator's note: In June 2013, Dr. Rochelle Davis interviewed the Lebanese artist, Emile Menhem and perused his personal collection of posters. Mr. Menhem worked for the United Information office of the PLO from the early 1970's until 1982. While there he created many posters some of which may be viewed here
The Great Emile Menhem in his office at al-Akhbar in Beirut. He stopped making posters for the PLO in 1982. Had a delightful, if smokey, two evenings spent going through the archive with him and talking about things, posters, and politics.
WOW! You actually... Inbox x Dan Walsh May 28 (7 days ago) to Rochelle met Emile. Mabrook! I hope you took his picture...I have always wondered what he looks like. And yeah, about the smoking...welcome to my world. Its one of the reasons I am glad I have minions! The SpC looks great and I love it that you can go in and fix stuff on-the-spot. Are you in Jordan now? I am in Maine. Salim reminded me that you and Amb. Nick are coming to Maine...when is that exactly? Q: Did Emile have any comments about this poster or even better a jpeg or slide of the complete original? http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/made-in-usa I am sure you and E are now BFF's ... do you think your Other New Lebanese BFF, Kawkab, might be motivated to do other/further/follow up research at your request? I am so happy up here. Today I washed all my clothes out of a bucket and last night I slept with two dogs and a cat in an open air "sugar shack" where they make maple syrup but it is so great as the worlds least visited B&B. Happy days! Rochelle Davis May 28 (7 days ago) to me Well, you know I've kinda had a crush on him, because his posters are so great. So when I met him, we were both kinda nervous -- it was rather sweet. And Abbie took a picture of us. He is super awesome and a lefty and really smart. He gave me a roll of 20 of his latest posters. He doesn't have any of his older work, all the stuff you have on the PPPA, because it was lost in 82. He is really glad to have his "portfolio" up on the site. So yes, me and E are BFFs and he can help put us in touch with Yousef Abdelki and Hussein Yaghi. Which reminds me, Hussein Yaghi has about 4 posters on the PPPA but he didn't have a name entry, so I changed them from Emile to Research in Progress, which may have been stupid. But I wrote them down -- I can send them to Emma, but does she know how to make a "new name"? Emile was really quite sweet and wonderful. Bye! Enjoy your sugar shack!