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On Photography Dispossession and Times of Struggle

Akram Zaatari

2017 00:37:00 LebanonArabicColorStereo16:9HD video

Description

Taking the idea of loss and dispossession as a starting point, this second reflection on photography and its people looks at the individual’s position within the context of war and how photographs become the sole record of that displacement, at the risk of them being dispersed as well.

This is a sequel to ON PHOTOGRAPHY PEOPLE AND MODERN TIMES. It represents at once a search for photographs, a research on photography in modern times and a story of displacement of thousands of photographs from private, sometimes intimate, spaces in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, into the archive of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut. The film is based on rushes that Akram Zaatari videotaped himself while doing his research on photography between 1998 and 2000.

Produced, written, directed by Akram Zaatari

Editing: Rita Mounzer

Photographic capture and work: Mahmoud Mirjan

Music: Nadim Mishlawi

Grading: Belal Hibri, Lucid

About Akram Zaatari

Akram Zaatari is an artist who lives and works in Beirut. He has been exploring Lebanon's postwar condition through collecting testimonies and various documents, notably on the mediation of territorial conflicts and wars through television, and the logic of Resistance in the context of the current geographical division of the Middle East.

Co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation (Beirut), he based his recent work on collecting, studying, and archiving a particular collection on the Middle East, notably studying the work of Lebanese photographer Hashem el Madani (1928-) as a register of social relationships and of photographic practices.

In addition to his work as an artist, Zaatari is also the curator of the Radical Closure box set, which includes his work In This House.

Grand winner of the 17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil.

Represented in the Lebanese Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.