Walking between old trains and rails, listening to the voices of the oldest Ammani citizens in a video documentary and admiring their photo portrait series inside the first- and second-class wagon coaches — this was the opening of the Image Festival, an international festival of photography in Amman, situated at the Jordan Hejaz Railway Station, which was transformed for the first time in Jordan’s history into the backdrop for a cultural event. The festival opened April 1, and its exhibitions and workshops lasted until the end of the month, placing itself as one of the longest cultural events in Amman and in a region that associates itself with a great number of artists.

Linda al-Khoury, the founder, curator and organizer of this single major event dedicated to photography in the Middle East, chose this location for the festival’s sixth edition, connecting the history of Amman with this year’s festival theme, which is Hawwiye (“Identity”).

“Amman used to be a small settlement of Circassian refugees when the railway station opened in 1908,” Khoury told Al-Monitor. “The history of this place tells about the development of Amman and its people’s identity. We want ... photography to bring the attention to the city’s first traces.”

Under Ottoman rule, Jordan was pushed to the status of a backwater province. The Amman railway station brought Syrians and Palestinian traders who started their businesses around the growing village. The Image Festival’s opening set the opportunity for Ammani citizens to dig into their modern city’s origins and recall its identity as a refugee recipient.