April 1, 2010

Photographic Conversation

Burj al-Shamali, is one of the twelve official Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. It is situated 5 km southeast of the city Tyre. People say that it was once "far away" from the city when it was established, surrounded by fields, with no road network leading to it. Today, it has become part of the city's closest suburbs, but remains an enclosed space that accommodates a micro society, that interacts very little with its surrounding. It was this space and its inhabitants, the way they perceive and use photographs that interested me when I established an atelier in the camp. 

The aim of the Photographic Conversation I initiated was not to teach technical skills in photography, the idea was mainly to look at photographs and discuss them in order to understand people's relationship to images in general and their own representation in particular.  Until today it is not very clear to me why those I worked with quickly developed projects structured as endless series. Susan produced an inventory of different house-elements; Ali deconstructed and reconstructed specific rituals; Yasser, Fatmeh and Nesreen produced series of portraits.

For exhibitions they decided to edit their series down to a reasonable number of photographs, choosing the best or the most outstanding ones. In this online anthology, we decided to show non-edited series of the young's broad observations of space and society. Looking at this collective experience as one extensive body of work allows us to explore its archival character.

In order to extend our Photographic Conversation, we created an e-mail address and encourage readers/viewers to share their feedback with us. Please send your mail to: photoconv@gmail.com

The first series are by Susan al-Khatib. She was the first who started producing images in series. In a very systematical way she went around the camp and photographed doors, one after the other. She asked me for chalk in order to mark the doors she had photographed. Once she was satisfied or maybe fed up with doors, she started to photograph windows, sofas and beds in the same manner. The series end when she decided to move away from Burj al-Shamali. 


Series 1: Doors


         

          

         

        

          

        

         

         

        

        

         

           



Series 2: Windows