Khalil Raad

Raad's photography documented political events and daily life in Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria over the course of fifty years. He produced over 1230 glass plates which were rescued from his studio during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War by a young Italian friend who crossed no-man's land several times at night. Also in his studio archive were a number of negatives, some of which have yet to be printed. The entire archive was donated to the Institute of Palestine Studies and many of the photographs were published in the work, Before their Diaspora by the Journal of Palestine Studies. Raad's archival materials were described as among "the most precious collections in the IPS archives" alongside those of Wasif Jawhariyyah. A collection of postcards that bear Raad's signature are held by the Middle East Centre of Oxford University together with 40 prints of Ottoman soldiers in Palestine from World War I. Captioned in English, these photographs "had clearly been intended for use as propaganda by the Ottoman forces," according to Badr al-Hajj. Ruth Raad, Khalil's daughter, said that her father was a friend of the military governor of Syria under Ottoman rule, Jamal Pasha, who facilitated Raad's access to the Egyptian-Palestinian front.

Raad also produced postcards for tourists. Modern scholars, such as Annelies Moors, have critiqued his presentation of Palestinian Arabs in this body of work, noting that he "often used biblical connotations that conscribed their lives as static," thus conforming to the Orientalism characterizing Western postcard portrayals of the Other. Academics who supported the Palestinian's national struggle, such as Bader Al Haj, Walid Khalidi and Elias Sanbar saw the photographs that Khalil Raad took showing the life in the country, criticized him saying he was helping the "Zionist" propaganda. Anneliese Moors, a Dutch researcher, said in response to the academics who supported Palestinian's national struggle believes that some of the photographs of Raad had connotations from the Bible or the New Testament which gave it legitimacy to the photographic characters and their lives. But, both her and Rona Sela an Israeli curator, emphasize that Raad first photographed for commercial and tourist purposes. To explain her opinion, Rona Sela says that Raad "lacked political awareness" and adapted to the patterns that appeared as stereotypical "colonial", which came as a direct effect from the scriptures of the Christians and Jews. Apart from a few political rallies, the photographer did not specify the conflict between Arabs and Jews in his work which occurred during his years that he was an active photographer.