Reality in the Real
Photographer Gilbert Hage speaks to Lebanese artists in the aftermath of the explosion in the Port of Beirut
Gilbert Hage, Still from Mohammad El Rawas’ Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020.
Reality in the Real proposes a living archive of individual human experience in the face of a large-scale tragic event. In the series of videos presented—the first moving image work executed by celebrated Lebanese photographer Gilbert Hage—Lebanese artists relate their private encounters with the explosion in the port of Beirut on August 4th, 2020. In the event's aftermath, the portrayed subjects reflect on the broader history of their country and on how this history has impacted their personal lives.
Hage’s work is characterised by its objective approach. His photographic series are minutely executed, observing a strict protocol developed by the artist. In this way, Hage allows his subjects to speak for themselves, letting the photographic image exceed the will of the photographer. This process also structures Reality in the Real. The artists interviewed are deprived of their usual setting. Instead, the human form is presented in isolation, against a neutral background. Hage is not interested in facts or in a journalistic, exploitative depiction of tragic events. Rather, by focusing on the human figure, his work looks for individual truth: ‘I am showing what is told in these videos by leaving it to the imagination of each spectator.’
Owing to its focus on oral histories, Reality in the Real makes it possible for future generations to engage in plural perspectives. This archive sees the many signifying processes that are involved in an event that escapes any simple definition—an occurrence of what Lacan defines as ‘the Real’. As the artist himself puts it, ‘it was very important to build an archive with the feeling of a sensitive human being, of an artist talking about how they were living this period.’ Resisting the simplification—as well as the omissions—of ‘official archives’, Reality in the Real preserves history as a process that is as nuanced as it is lived.
New videos will be released on our website every week.
The views, information, or opinions expressed during in the interviews that make up the Oral History Collection are those of each individual involved and do not represent those of the Foundation for Art and Psychoanalysis.
Gilbert Hage, Ziad Abillama's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 15:55 min
Gilbert Hage, Lina Abyad's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 21:46 min
Gilbert Hage, Rasha Al Ameer's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 20:45 min
Gilbert Hage, Rita Awn's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 10:07 min
Gilbert Hage, Ara Azad's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 20:09 min
Gilbert Hage, Tony Chakar's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 23:31 min
Gilbert Hage, Ralph Doumit's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 21:33 min
Gilbert Hage, Charbel Haber's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 21:54 min
Gilbert Hage, Rola El Hussein's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 18:53 min
Gilbert Hage, Hisham Jaber's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 23:44 min
Gilbert Hage, Abed Al Kadiri's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 23:23 min
Gilbert Hage, Toufic Kerbage's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 22:43 min
Gilbert Hage, Marwa Khalil's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 21:25 min
Gilbert Hage, Charif Majdalani's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 20:48 min
Gilbert Hage, Ricardo Mbarkho's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 22:58 min
Gilbert Hage, Nour Ouayda's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 23:02 min
Gilbert Hage, Alexandre Paulikevitch's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 18:54 min
Gilbert Hage, Rania Rafei's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 20:38 min
Gilbert Hage, Mohammad El Rawas' Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 19:09 min
Gilbert Hage, Nadia Safieddine's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 21:14 min
Gilbert Hage, Ghassan Salhab's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 24:15 min
Gilbert Hage, Mohamed Soueid's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 31:09 min
Gilbert Hage, Caroline Tabet's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 18:12 min
Gilbert Hage, Nadim Tabet's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 22:08 min
Gilbert Hage, Nadine Touma's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 20:38 min
Gilbert Hage, Alain Vassoyan's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 12:03 min
Gilbert Hage, Hala Younes's Testimonial from the series Reality in the Real, 2020, HD video, 22:18 min
Gilbert Hage in Conversation with the Foundation for Art and Psychoanalysis
London — Paris, 19 November 2020
Foundation for Art and Psychoanalysis: One of the most striking qualities of your work is the tension between photography as a fine art medium and photography as documentation, as a historical document. How do you perceive this contrast in your practice?
Gilbert Hage: I think that most photographs end up becoming a document with time. Nowadays, we see many exhibitions in museums, galleries, or other spaces that are filled with photography, with photojournalistic photographs that were done in the middle of the last century without any need or pretension to be exhibited. Cartier-Bresson used to say, ‘I am not an artist. I am an artisan.’ Just looking, in a photograph, at the streets, the buildings, the way we used to wear our clothes, the cars in the streets… It becomes a document and it questions the evolution of humanity. If we are talking about my work, photographs from the Toufican Ruins? series could end up becoming a document for sure. It has been a document from the beginning. But it is a document questioning the way we are going to live with these ruins once they are restored, the way Jalal Toufic explains it in his text ‘Ruins’. How are we going, as citizens living in these neighbourhoods, even when the buildings depicted are restored (this series was executed just after the 2006 war in Beirut, they are restored now) to experience them? Are we going to experience them destroyed or are we going to forget? Are we going to live with them one more time as a forgotten destruction? The questioning of the memories and of the space destroyed was my concern at the time. In my work, I am questioning the dignity of the human being. This is what interests me in photography and in any other art form or practice.
FAP: In general, we have had the tendency to associate something that leans more towards photojournalism with the visual vocabulary of the snapshot. Something impromptu and accidental. Your photographs, on the other hand, even in the case of Toufican Ruins?, are carefully conceived and arranged.
GH: In my work, when I decide to work on something or when I have something to be revolted against, something that causes me frustration, continuously thinking about the project leads me to establish a protocol to follow. That’s why you can feel what you’re saying. There is always some kind of repetition in the way I’m working on the same project. If we’re talking of Toufican Ruins?, I did my first shoot with my small camera, to know which buildings I was going to shoot and where, at what time. And then the project was built up, this kind of protocol. I go and place the camera at the same distance when it is possible. I establish a lot of criteria and try to repeat them in every single shot I am doing. You can also notice this in the 242 cm2 series. Here you can see the protocol that was applied. This project is about the virtuality of borders and frontiers. What you see in these photographs is a one-to-one ratio depiction of the Lebanese territory. On this occasion, it was really a completely identical protocol for the hundred pictures taken. Similarly, in my Smoking Area series, you can notice that all the photographs are taken at the same place, at the same height in relation to the table, the same lines, the same thickness, the same colour… There is always a protocol, a repeated protocol for each of my projects.
FAP: Would you also say that your photographs are not only a documentation of their time, but also of their protocol, of the thought that goes into their set-up?
GH: Not in that way. It might be the reverse. If you see the photograph, you can understand the protocol behind it. But the photos are not the record of the protocol. The protocol is important but not the goal. The protocol is here to make the end product possible, the visual.
FAP: Which role would say portraiture plays in your practice?
GH: Portraiture, for me… I don’t use this word. I use the human being. For me, it’s [about] the human being and their environment.
FAP: In a way, the human being is then depicted as an embodiment of their context.
GH: Yes. My concern is with the dignity of the human being. Each time I see it in danger, I use a human being to show how dangerous what has happened is. The series Anonymous, for instance, is about how once you are not a consumer, you are no longer of interest to society or anyone else. And you start disappearing. When I showed these photos for the first time, in 2002, they were 15 x 15 cm and very dark. When they were hanging on the wall, you had to get close to them to be able to see an image inside. These subjects were eliminated from society because they were, let’s say, useless to our economy. So that’s why I turned everyone into ‘anonymous’; no one is interested in them anymore. It’s not about the portrait.
FAP: You have previously discussed the influence that German photography has had on your work—artists such as August Sander, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky, and Candida Höfer, for example.
GH: In photography, August Sander was one of the pioneers of New Objectivity, an artistic movement that arose at the beginning of the last century and continued 50 years later with the Bechers and the Dusseldorf School of photography, in which you don’t put emotion into the result. There’s no perspective in the way you are taking the photos, you are not adding emotion and sensation to the photos, but letting the object itself question others. And I believe that’s what is interesting to me.
FAP: The series Ici et Maintenant, for which you have been photographing Lebanese citizens aged 18-30 since 2003, could be viewed by some as an archive or a historical document. How do you see the relationship between these images and history?
GH: It will go into an archive in the years to come. Even some of them, since 2003 (which means seventeen years have passed since the first photograph) have already become an archive—of how we used to have our hair, how we used to be dressed. In this way, it will be a document. And I think that every single work of art, even painting, has always been used as a tool of comparison to try to understand older societies. My intention is to compare what Lebanese citizenship could be in reality and in the international imagination. Because when you don’t know Lebanon, or you don’t know Lebanese people, or you don’t know anything about Lebanon, you know only that it’s a war zone, an endless war zone, you can imagine anything else. And many people have never seen a Lebanese young person. So they could be used now as a document. It’s not about the person by themselves. It’s about globalisation and how, as Lebanese, we were global way before globalisation. What I’m saying here is that we end up looking much more like our culture than our genes. And that was the purpose of the project. It was not showing portraits but showing culture and questioning globalisation as someone who is Lebanese.
FAP: Is Reality in the Real your first project on video? How have you experienced the transition from still to moving image?
GH: Yes, it was the first one. It was not in my plans, let’s say. The trigger for me was that, for a long time, I was doing research on the beginning of the Lebanese war of 1975 and I couldn’t find anything other than media archives, or politician archives, or archives by journalists. For me, it was very important to build an archive with the feeling of a sensitive human being, of an artist talking about how they were living this period. And I think that for the new generation as well it is important to have what I searched for. I started to record with my phone but the result was not interesting at all for me. It was not enough. So I decided on another camera and it was enough. I tried projecting it on a big screen to see the result and it was ok. Then I started to be interested in sound. I found the microphone that I could use. I then had to learn how to use editing software as well. And then, when I knew I could manage everything, I said, ‘yes, I will do this project.’
FAP: In the video series, like in your photographic work, you have opted for a neutral background. The historical background of the series, which you cannot see in the videos, on the other hand, is the tragic aftermath of the explosion at the port of Beirut on August 4th, 2020. In which ways would you see the isolated figures in the videos dialogue with their broader context?
GH: At the beginning, in situ videos were asked, which meant going to each place. And I said ‘no, I will do it like I do my other work.’ So there would be a template in place at the studio, same lighting and same composition. For me, it’s about what they are saying, what they think, how they have lived this force of the August explosion. I didn’t want facts. I wanted truth. And fact and truth are not synonyms. The truth is about how you felt, and how you’re feeling, and how you talk about something. That’s your truth. That’s your reality. The general reality, you can find it on thousands of websites. You can see the destruction easily. But the real, their reality, their own version, their own realities, their own motivations, and how they lived this, how they’ve got insomnia, how they were not able to be what they used to be anymore… that’s the truth I think. What is important is what we are now, and how we absorb this drama, this explosion, however you want to call it. The result is how we think about it and how we digest the event. And the story we will end up with, how we will tell this to our grandchildren later on, that’s what’s important. Your lived experience is much more important at this stage. Beirut is destroyed—many people passed away, many people are injured, many houses are destroyed. But how we experience this, that’s what I was looking for. It’s important not to mix it with the drama in the background and not to be sensational. It’s about communicating the reality of each person I have in front of my camera. It’s about them just trying to think about it and saying what they want to say.
FAP: How did you choose the subjects who participate in the series?
GH: I chose artists who were not neutral regarding what was happening in Beirut in the last year. They said what they wanted to say during the year. They were involved, you know, in what was happening. That was the first criterion. The second one was that I chose people with a kind of standard of work. I appreciate what they’re doing in their artistic practices. And I chose people who were not on TV all the time. I asked the questions in a dark studio, with black walls all around, and this huge light… I was behind the light. It was a kind of police interrogation and also similar to when you go to confess in church. It was confession, testimony, and interrogation. And that’s the way I wanted: confession because I think we are partly responsible for what is happening, testimony because we lived it, and interrogation because so many want to understand.
FAP: What are the similarities and differences between the position of the photographer and the position of the interviewer?
GH: Discussing and dealing with questions, and asking questions, it’s all part of my daily life. Especially since I have been teaching for thirty years, I am always being asked questions, and I have to prepare questions and anticipate answers, you know. I am much more into discussions than into images. It was natural for me to discuss with people, and it was not an obstacle, let’s say, to start these videos. It was just like what I am used to doing with my photographic work. When I have a human being in front of me, for many projects it’s the same, we start with a long discussion then a small time of shooting. It was the same procedure. It was the same protocol if you want.
FAP: In addition to the technical difficulties presented by the video format, I am guessing that, due to the times we are living in and the limitations imposed by COVID-19, the execution of Reality in the Real was met with many constraints.
GH: It was but it’s part of the game. When I receive a person, when an artist is able to come to my place, it is the highlight of my day. Otherwise I am alone, working, reading and watching movies day after day. So when I have someone to discuss with… And especially now that this second part is about understanding how people are living outside Lebanon. During the war, I refused to leave Lebanon. I lived and witnessed every problem directly from Beirut. In March, just before the confinement, I was in Berlin, where I live part of the time. And as soon as I understood we were going into confinement, I went to Beirut to be confined. I could have stayed in Berlin but I cannot live any kind of problem from the outside, let’s say, when there is a problem concerning Lebanon. So it’s interesting for me to understand how people can deal with this being outside.
FAP: You have mentioned that talking and discussion are an essential part of your photographic practice. Having now produced this series of videos, what would you say is the relationship between visual and oral histories?
GH: I am showing what is told in these videos by leaving it to the imagination of each spectator. When the filmed subjects are describing what happened and where they were when it happened, you have to imagine the scene. You cannot see it. The image is here just as a support, to convey body language and how people are dealing with it—whether they are calm or not, using their hands or not, if they are moving or not moving. You can understand and understand many things from the body language but you cannot see the event. You are not in the event. It’s not really visual, but it’s not just oral, because you have this body language that is important.
FAP: Has this project provoked any reflections on your work as a whole? Would you say it has had an impact on the way you might conceive of future projects?
GH: I am a cinephile. For years, I have had the idea of making a movie. It’s a fantasy, let’s say. It’s not a reality. I don’t have a project, for now. I don’t know if I am going on to videos or not. But I am open, you know, to so many things in life. I am not refusing anything and I am not stubborn, let’s say. This project, for example, was an accident. I was called for something and it ended up being something else. It’s how you deal with accidents… By accident, I mean not only bad things, but good things, too. I am open to accidents and I like accidents in life, which make you change your direction, do things that were not planned. To be open and deal with accidents in a positive way is the way in which I am always working.
Gilbert Hage was born in Lebanon, in 1966. He lives, works, and teaches in Lebanon. Hage’s photographic projects include Toufican Zombies? (2021), The Earth Is Like a Child That Knows Poems by Heart (2020), Things Will Happen Elsewhere. Things Are Always Happening (2019), The Place That Remains (2018), What If Celine Jiged On The Right Flute? (2017), I Hated You Already Because of the Lies I Had Told You (2011), Why Do We Feel Like Kafka? (2011), Eleven Views of Mount Ararat (2009), Strings (aka With Strings Attached) (2008), Pillows (2007), Screening Berlin (2006), 242 cm2 (2006), Homeland 1(aka Toufican Ruins?) (2006), Phone [Ethics] (2006), Here and Now (2004), Beirut (2004), Anonymous (2002), and 28 Roses b/w (1999). Alongside Jalal Toufic, Hage is the co-editor and co-director of Underexposed Books.
Ziad Abillama has lived and worked in Lebanon for the past twenty-two years. Since returning from his studies in the US, Abillama has executed works as a way to rethink the Lebanese Civil War. His approach is not totalising or seeking to blame a specific party. Rather, the artist finds it important to reflect on violence while avoiding politics.
Lina Abyad is an Associate Professor at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. She staged around 40 plays. Several themes haunt her stage: the Lebanese civil war, women, Palestine, and the Arab dictatorships. The theatre she creates is socially and politically engaged with controversial issues surrounding the MENA region.
Rasha Al Ameer is a novelist: Judgment Day translated into English, French and Italian. A publisher: Dar al Jadeed a Renaissance press with a radical catalogue. A linguist: Kitab al Hamza to adapt Arabic to modern times.
Rita Awn is a Lebanese visual artist, based in Beirut. She studied at the National Superior School of Fine Arts in Paris, France. Since 1994, Awn has worked in the fields of painting, sculpture, video installation, digital imaging, and digital animation. She depicts the human figure, exploring the ways in which it progresses towards critical thresholds.
Ara Azad Barsoumian dit Ara Azad is an American/Lebanese artist of Armenian lineage. He is a graduate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Tufts University, Medford, and the Institute for Global Leadership (EPIIC 95) Massachusetts, USA. He lives and works in Boston and Beirut.
Tony Chakar is a Lebanese artist, architect and storyteller, whose work incorporates literature, philosophy, and theory. His latest solo show, As in a Beginning, was held at the Van Abbemuseum in 2018. His latest group show was the 2019 exhibition Wednesday Society: The couch of Meret O. He teaches Architecture and Art at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA – UOB).
Ralph Doumit was born in 1985 in Beirut. Doumit is a graduate in comics from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. He is an author and illustrator of comics, novels, and albums. He teaches Comics, Comic Book History and History of Images at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. He is a cultural journalist.
Charbel Haber is a Lebanese musician, performer, composer and visual artist from Beirut. His work has seen him collaborate with artists from a wide range of disciplines—film, video art, visual art, and theatre—both in Lebanon and abroad.
Rola El Hussein is a Lebanese writer. Born in 1978, she graduated from the Lebanese University’s Faculty of Art in 2003. Published 4 poetry collections and 2 novels. Never stopped painting since graduation, yet never had a solo exhibition. Hussein has lived and worked abroad since 2003. In 2021, she plans to return to Lebanon to live, paint, and write.
Hisham Jaber is the founder and Artistic Director of the theatre company Metro Al Madina. Jaber wrote and directed Cola, Barbir, Mathaf, Dawra (2002), Solo or Solo (2003), Arabic Bread (2005), The Death of Najib Brax (2005), and Not For Public (2008). Since 2013, he has been working on the production Hishik Bishik Show. Bar Farouk (2015) and The Political Circus Show (2017), with more than 100 artists, have both premiered at Beiteddine International Festival.
Abed Al Kadiri is a Lebanese multidisciplinary artist, curator, and publisher. He was born in Beirut. Al Kadiri double majored in Arabic Literature and Fine Arts. His work focuses on the deprivation of freedom in society by analyzing contemporary issues of violence, cultural heritage, migration, and belonging. He has been awarded the Sursock Museum 32nd Salon d’automne, and has held several solo and group exhibitions locally and internationally.
Toufic Kerbage is a musicologist specialized in Pearl Diver music. He collaborated for two decades in workshops of modern classical composers. Kerbage taught history and theory of Western and Levantine music respectively, and their cross influences. He has worked as editor and co-editor of many writings on Levantine and Mediterranean music, as well as on sound design and music for short films.
Marwa Khalil studied Theatre and Film Directing in Lebanon, Paris and New York. She worked on stage and then went into cinema and television. Khalil acted in Lebanon and in Morocco, also taking part in foreign films in France and in the US. In addition to her work as an actress, Khalil has produced and co-written more than five stage plays.
Charif Majdalani is a Lebanese writer and novelist. Born in Beirut in 1960, he has published eight novels in French, which have been translated into seven languages. He is a Professor at Saint-Joseph University, a member of L’Orient littéraire’s editorial board and President of the International Writers’ House in Beirut.
Ricardo Mbarkho is a Lebanese artist, researcher, and assistant professor. In his work, he investigates the transformation of cultural industries into creative industries in the digitalization age. Ricardo Mbarkho holds a PhD in Information and Communication Sciences, a Masters in Visual Arts, and a Bachelor in Film Studies.
Nour Ouayda is a filmmaker, film critic and programmer. She is a co-editor of the Montreal-based online film journal Hors champ. She is deputy director at Metropolis Cinema Association in Beirut. Her films and writing research the practice of drifting in cinema.
Alexandre Paulikevitch was born in Beirut in 1982. He moved to Paris in 2000 and graduated from the University of Paris 8 with a degree in Theatre and Dance. Paulikevitch has been living in Beirut since 2006, creating spaces of reflection on ‘Baladi Dance’—commonly known as ‘Belly Dance’—through his work as a teacher and performer.
Rania Rafei is a Lebanese Beirut-based film director and artist. She holds a diploma in Cinema Studies. She directed many documentaries covering social and political subjects. She also wrote and directed short fiction films, video essays, installations and an award-winning feature film titled 74, the reconstitution of a struggle.
Mohammad El Rawas was born in Beirut in 1951. He studied at the Lebanese University and at Slade School of Fine Art. In 1981, El Rawas started teaching at the Lebanese University and at the American University of Beirut. He has held twelve solo exhibitions and has participated in more than forty international art biennials and fairs.
Nadia Safieddine was born in 1973. She received a BFA in Painting from the Lebanese University in 1997. Between 2002 and 2012, Safieddine lived in Berlin, where she showed her work in solo and group exhibitions. She now lives and works in Beirut, where she is represented by Agial Art Gallery.
Ghassan Salhab was born in Dakar, Senegal. He has directed seven feature films—Beyrouth Fantôme, Terra Incognita, The Last Man, 1958, The Mountain, The Valley and An open Rose/Warda—in addition to numerous ‘essays’, including (Posthumous) and Chinese ink… Salhab has also published different texts and articles, as well as the book fragments du Livre du naufrage.
Mohamed Soueid, born in 1959 in Beirut, Lebanon, is a writer, director, and producer. He is currently the head of the documentary department at Al Arabiya News Channel. He has directed several films and written three books: Postponed Cinema - Lebanese Films During the Civil War (1986), O Heart - A Film Autobiography On The Late Movie Theatres Of Old Beirut (1996), and the novel Cabaret Souad (2004).
Caroline Tabet is a Beirut-born photographer and video artist. Tabet’s practice revolves around the relationship between urban landscape and human trajectories, as well as notions of memory and loss. In 2003, she co-founded Engram collective, in collaboration with Lebanese photographer Joanna Andraos. Tabet’s work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions.
Nadim Tabet is a Lebanese director. He co-founded the Lebanese Film Festival, which is held every two years in Beirut, and has worked as a film programmer for several festivals in Europe. In 2016, Tabet directed his first feature film, One of these days. He is currently preparing his new feature, Under Construction, as well as a series called Faraya.
Nadine Touma is an award-winning polymath, author, artist, publisher, pedagogue, and a teller of tales. In 2006, she and Sivine Ariss co-founded Dar Onboz, a multidisciplinary creative platform producing Arabic publications, films, songs, performances, educational tools, games, objects, and exhibitions for the young and not so young, winning 34 international awards.
Alain Vassoyan grew up in Lebanon, within an environment where all contradictions were possible. Today, as a contemporary visual artist, Vassoyan gathers all these contradictions, employing playful and colourful characters, through which he explores themes of war, love and sexuality.
Hala Younes is an architect, geographer, and educator. In her practice, she takes a close look at the history of territories in order to initiate the design process. She created in 2018 the first Lebanese National Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale under the title The Place That Remains.
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