Beirut Book - Photographs From The Near East

Experiments with scale, print and paper type for new book - 'Backwards'

Summing up Backwards

My initial idea with this  book was to create something of a travel journal. the leftovers from this approach can be seen in the black covered concertina sketch book and also in this research journal. I soon realised that what I actually wanted to create, in reflection to my lebanon trip, was something more akin to my first project utilising a poetic song-like back and forth between the text and imagery. This time however the events I was dealing with were contemporary, this together with the primary nature of the research brought me towards a simpler more straightforward, less graphic visual side of things. These events are still going on, the civil war in syria could see yet more complications with a more active participation of the west, we will see.  

This book is about Lebanon, but Lebanon is barely mentioned. This is intentional, this is book about syria, about the west's relationship with the east, the ellipsis of all this is Lebanon. -"If there is no Syria what will happen to Lebanon?" It is what is implied by all these conflicting physical and theoretical realities but left out in the political reasoning about these things. A state which exists because of an accident of history, which now some may say operates as a laundry room for all the dirty money of the middle east and to others as a model of tolerance and balance in a sea of problems. It may also be the place where free market has proven how, if implemented without constraint, can make even the most hardened enemies partners in the quest for acumltive personal welath, thus peace. The flip side to this is the side effect; weird and excessive corruption together with soul destroying homogeneity.  

This is the homogeneity I was talking about in my final essay, it is a process of maybe sub-liminal but most probably liminal fatalism, which as its first victim, takes the arts and turns its possibilities for creative advancement into wet shiny wallpaper. The way through this is impossible to see clearly, i'm clutching at straws, I can only imagine the willingness to see through this will come from the margins, almost as an accident, like lebanon itself.

SO! The way through? It will seem desperate and mad, It will come from the unexpected, at the edge of the center to the middle, to the east? The lebanese bank manager and his visions, thats the idea...

Anyway this is turning into more of a rant than a summary, I'm running out of time....        

                  

Evolution of letters 'Annoying symbols' and cover of book idea

I have been doing a Wikipedia binge today following the further story of the Phoenician alphabet, reading into how it spread like a  cultural disease across the world. I came across lots of strange charts including the two above. I especially like the top one, it is very proud and very mad.  Anyway eventually stumbled upon a website about symbols used in medieval Arabic alchemy inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is weird to see how the beginnings and ends of written language have joined forces,  in the pursuit of the completely unattainable. 

The concept  I'm developing for the front cover of my book is to display something of this begins and ends,   although I don't want to  imply any connection to alchemy.  However  this website makes me think that as soon as you start throwing letters around without really understanding what they mean you cannot help but imply a practice of alchemy, bad alchemy that is...

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Never thought about the connection between the crescent moon and the ouroboros...

Selected Sketches

Potential material for ending new book

In the process of writing my book  I generally have a few thematic concerns from around which I generate imagery.  From this imagery I then generate text.  This is a particular piece of text I liked, but I'm not sure I'm going to include.

The darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. 

You are not dreaming

You are reading a book

You fall asleep while reading a book

imagine waking thousands of years later

would you finish reading the book?

Imagine falling asleep reading a book

You awake a thousand years later

You look at the book

But you can not read it

I CANT USE THE ' 

Lebanon - Byblos

 Byblos is directly and tangibly associated with the history of the diffusion of the Phoenician alphabet (on which humanity is still largely dependent today), See above two examples of this diffusion on one sign. Two for the price of one!

 The scribes of Byblos developed an alphabetic phonetic script, the precursor of our modern alphabet. By 800 B.C., it had traveled to Greece, changing forever the way humans communicated. the earliest form of the Phoenician alphabet found to date is the inscription on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram. Found in Byblos, in fact.

Train from the past

This photo was emailed to me by a Frenchman named Ludo on the 14th of May 2013. I met him when I was in beirut gathering up material for my book that was sort of about that place and sort of a book.

Ludo loved ruins, he had traveled to Bosnia, Belfast, Berlin in search of ruins. He said he worked for the UN or was a photographer or both or was one and wanted to be the other. I'm not sure

He was not meant to take this photo, he took it in secret while our guide was not looking.  

 Here is an email I sent about the trip to the train station

I tried to go to the old train station to take photos, but they told me in order to do so I would have to fill in a form pay 1000 LL and wait 5 days, So instead me and a frenchman just had a walk around with a guide who spoke french but no english

He wasn't really a guide, he just worked for the railways. Arounds arounds abouts, There are no plans for any trains to arrive or depart cos there isn't anywhere for them to go.

He did know some english like "train" and and "go to" he said 'no photo' a few times. Found out the railways employs 2000 people here.

There are no trains that work there are only bits of rails, bits pointing to what was palestine, pointing in the direction of syria. Everything is rusty and full of holes, everyone is at their desks in the offices. One man was sleeping.

Lebanon - Batroun

   
LEFT: Box containing Orthodox patriarch

The batroun projects is an art space where I stayed for a few nights, I entered and left the house through a window.   The house was being looked after by a small Syrian man and his family,  we had a few confusing conversations and he gave me some coffee.

 This is the room,  mosquitoes were a bit of a problem

ABOVE:  is the type of strange concrete block-like almost Soviet type building you get in a lot of places in Lebanon. This type of building is a reflection of the pre-Civil War direction of things,  centralised, big and planned a bit broken,  the direction never fulfilled.



LEFT: Ancient doorway with broken glass,  in the old town part of Batroun.






BELOW:
Stylish red faced baker.

 Pebble beach in Batroun,  complete with Ottoman leftovers

These are the type of buses that take you up and down the length of lebanon.  you stand at the side of the motorway waiting for one to approach you on the hard shoulder then you shout your destination at them. they either stop and let you in or if they're not going to that destination they drive on without acknowledging you. On the bus back from batroun I met a guy with a big bushy beard and the type of internationalist American accent that lots of the young Lebanese seem to have when speaking english.  he started complaining about his country in the way many young Lebanese people do, however his particular brand of astonishment was very entertaining.

He told me about the port of  beirut, how nobody knows what goes on in there,  nobody knows what it does. "Is that where the money comes from?"

"Look at these cars, families are selling their land so their sons and daughters can have these cars. Other families are buying these cars for their sons and daughters with money from where, where did the money come from? -  nobody knows, really nobody can be sure"

 He also complained about the malls,  countless air-conditioned shopping palaces everywhere in Beirut.

" these malls, they have all got absolutely stupid names, but there all the same. people attend the opening of a these malls, what for? Another place which offers you exactly the same experience as the other place -  only this experience is a new experience,  but still the same?  my family are happy because I'm not like the other  young people,  but sometimes a bit confused by the beard,  sometimes they say,  look at him, he is an intellectual with his beard" 

When I sat down next to him he was  in the middle of revising equations. He is studying engineering,  this is the career path these parents thought he should take, he said it was boring.  He lives with his girlfriend,  and has opened a cafe with her in Hamra,  the cafe is named after a character from a play written by Khalil Gibran. (  He wrote the book, the Prophet,  the most widely known book written by a writer from Lebanon, maybe the whole region )  His parents don't really ask him too many questions about his private life, and he does not tell them.  His girlfriend is from Italy.

 I mentioned offhand that his accent was quite American expecting him to spend some time there, he was surprised by this because he's never been to America.  I can't really tell the difference between the international American accent,  and one that just sort of been acquired through time spent there.

He then went on a tirade about young Lebanese people pretending to be sophisticated in these malls with their silly french names;

"They speak French not out of any practicality but in  some sort of ridiculous display in order to appear sophisticated,  but they can't even speak French. I don't speak French and even I can tell that they don't even speak French.  They speak this crazy version of French which has nothing to do with the original language or the place they live in.  And when they speak Arabic or English they put on this stupid fake French accent - I don't understand why they do this"

Lebanon - Beirut

  

The man in the bird shop  wanted to know where I came from,  then he wanted to talk to me about terrorism.  After this he wanted to talk about art.



"Do you think my birds are art?"

"Yes I  suppose they are, its culture, bird keeping"

"I'm going to paint a mural on the wall, a forest.  well I cannot painted  directly on the wall because the birds will die with the fumes of the paint,  so instead I am getting a man to design the forest and  then it will be printed onto wallpaper and pasted onto that wall"

RIGHT: Internal affairs building in beirut. Outside the building there was a huge queue snaking back all the way down the street. these are syrian refugees attempting to get papers of residence or possibly work permits. As I was driving past in a taxi, the taxi driver said 'Syrians, more and more of them everyday, not good'..

ABOVE AND BELOW: The old centre of Beirut has been completely renovated,  this renovation is an  absolutist reflection of the new way of doing things. This  new way of doing things is a wholehearted  reliance on unrestrained capitalism as a bringer of both internal stability and national wealth. it was all Rafic Hariri  idea,  before somebody blew him up.  still nobody is sure who blew him up. 

The whole centre district is now privately owned, mainly by Saudi's,  and controlled by private security guards,  if they don't like the way you look you're not coming in.  This has led to a perception amongst locals  that part of the city, a city that has only just been reconstructed has now been sold off. The people of the city do not own  the centre. 

 In the reconstruction of the Central district they use lots of old stone to do the renovation,  on the surface it's very  complimentary, from a distance it looks like it makes sense.   however a more detailed inspection  exposes a corporate soullessness to the place,  that feels a bit like a reanimated corpse or maybe a wax dummy.