Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
Wonder Beirut #13, 1998 - 2006
Histoire d'un photographe pyromane
Diasec, photografic print aluminium
70 x 105 cm
Edition of 5 ex + 2 AP
Courtesy : les artistes & Galerie In Situ-fabienne leclerc, Grand Paris
Wonder Beirut is a multifaceted project based on the work of a fictional Lebanese photographer named Abdellah Farah that the artists created as a cinematographic character and who, at the end of the 1960s, produced images that they would use in the project several years later.
Between 1968 and 1969, Abdellah Farah was commissioned by the Lebanese State to take pictures to be edited as postcards. They represented the Beirut Central District, mainly the Lebanese Riviera and its luxury hotels, which contributed to form an idealized picture of Lebanon in the 1960s and 1079s. Those same postcards are still on sale nowadays, although most of the places they represent were destroyed during the armed conflicts or by the reconstruction.
Catalogue Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige / JRP RINGIER Edition, 2013