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Beirut: Images on fire
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Beirut: Images on fire

Samer Mohdad 4 دقيقة قراءة

August 4, 2020, 6:05 pm, a deadly explosion occurs at the Port of Beirut. Experts rank it as the fourth largest non-nuclear explosion in human history. The damage is enormous. Two-thirds of the Lebanese capital is destroyed by the shock wave. The detonation is heard as far as Cyprus and windows smashed at a distance of 50 km. There are at least 200 killed by the explosion and more than 6,000 injured. Tens of thousands of families find themselves homeless.

According to official sources, the explosion was caused by fireworks that caught fire in the hangar where they had been stored with several hundred tons of ammonium nitrate. One of their claims is that the accident occurred as a result of welding work carried out by maintenance workers at the entrance to the depot. Other claims allege that rockets in transit through the port of Beirut exploded, causing the devastating blast that set Beirut on fire.

A fire broke out in my own workshop. Prints of my photographic work on the civil war in Lebanon between 1975 and 1991, in particular from the series War Children, caught fire. Other prints from the Beirut Mutations series also burned down. Instead of trying to save them by extinguishing the fire, my instinctive reaction was to take pictures of the scene with my smartphone, as if the fire was a purifier of all the evils experienced during these years of suffering. As I watched all these images burn and turn to dust, I was reminded of the Phoenician legend of the Phoenix rising from its ashes.

I was ten years old when the civil war broke out in Lebanon. Since then, I have the impression that my country has continuously been on fire — invasions of foreign armies, (un)civil wars, and historical conflicts. My art emerged in this tension. 

When I watch all my artistic work scroll in front of my eyes a posteriori, facing these stories written with light, I can only question the border between reality and fiction, between a sentiment of acquired experience and a constructed sensorial impression. Isn't this light/shadow, inside/outside, and reality/fiction a gateway to a poem? 

Today these photographic prints burn in protest, facing the desperate crisis that Lebanon is experiencing and beyond, to stand up against the horrors that humanity is facing. Will the purifying fire still be able to create a space of hope?

 

Frontline between east and west Beirut seen from the west, downtown Beirut, Lebanon 1989. The original burning image was published in the book War Children, Lebanon 1985-1992, cover.

 

 

Shooting practice at the Syrian Social Nationalist Party’s Lion Cubs training camp in Mount Lebanon, 1989. The original burning image was published in the book War Children, Lebanon 1985-1992, page 51.

 

 

The original burning image was published in the book War Children, Lebanon 1985-1992, page 41.
Syrian Social Nationalist Party’s Lion Cubs training camp in Mount Lebanon, 1989.

 

Living on the demarcation line in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, 1988. The original burning image was published in the book War Children, Lebanon 1985-1992, page 57.

 

 

Martyrs’ square, Beirut 1992. The original burning image was published in the book “Beirut Mutations”, page 78.

 

 

Zeitouni district, previously known as the prostitution district, located at the proximity of Beirut port entrance, 1995. The original burning image was published in the book “Beirut Mutations”, page 116.

 

 

Manifestation following the assassination of Rafic Hariri on March 14, 2005. The original burning image was published in the book “Beirut Mutations”, page 161.

 

 

Luxury boutiques in the city center of Beirut, 2012. The original burning image was published in the book “Beirut Mutations”, page 195.
#Beirut #Lebanon
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