Wonder Beirut #14, Beirut, The Statue of Riad Solh
Photograph
1997-2006 (photographed)
1997-2006 (photographed)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
Vivid colour photograph with a broad black border. Depicting an urban scene with a central paved area and a monument. A building on one of the buildings nearby this area bears a billboard with a large letter 'Z' in white on black. The image shows damage to the negative from which it is printed.
Object details
| Category | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Wonder Beirut #14, Beirut, The Statue of Riad Solh (assigned by artist) |
| Materials and techniques | C-type print mounted on aluminuim with face mounting |
| Brief description | Photograph, 'Wonder Beirut #14, Beirut, The Statue of Riad Solh' from the series 'Wonder Beruit: The Story of a Pyromaniac Photographer, 1997-2006', by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Lebanon, 1997-2006 |
| Physical description | Vivid colour photograph with a broad black border. Depicting an urban scene with a central paved area and a monument. A building on one of the buildings nearby this area bears a billboard with a large letter 'Z' in white on black. The image shows damage to the negative from which it is printed. |
| Dimensions |
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| Gallery label | In this series Hadjithomas and Joreige use photography to blur fact and fiction. The artists noticed that tourist postcards of pre-civil war Beirut were still for sale after the war ended in 1990. They invented a fictional photographer named Abdallah Farrah who, in 1968, was commissioned by the tourist board to make postcard views of Beirut's attractions. When the civil war broke out in 1975, he began to burn his negatives to reflect the surrounding destruction. The artists present these works as prints from the fictional photographer's damaged negatives.
(Marta Weiss)(September 2012) |
| Credit line | Art Fund Collection of Middle Eastern Photography at the V&A and the British Museum |
| Production | Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige have collaborated since the 1990s. |
| Place depicted | |
| Associated objects |
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| Bibliographic reference | Light from the Middle East: New Photography |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | E.1125-2012 |
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| Record created | October 15, 2012 |
| Record URL |
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