BREATHING WALLS (2006 - 2012)
By definition, walls are barriers. They can also act as windows to the conflicts engulfing their surroundings. In times of strife walls offer a means of communication and self-expression for members of all social and religious communities. They have proven themselves an effective tool in establishing dialogue between suppressed voices and opinions by offering a canvas or soapbox for the oppressed. The Berlin Wall and The Peace Lines Walls of Northern Ireland are but just two examples. They are storytellers--absorbing and reflecting their surroundings--and becoming silent witnesses to our lives and battles.
Breathing Walls is a project I originally started photographing in Lebanon, my country of origin. I felt the necessity to document these ephemeral testimonies of life as a record of an important period in time. With the rising of the Arab spring I decided to broaden my project and begin documenting other countries in the region where the walls are a crucial tool of communication and an unbiased reflection of the socio-political status. Egypt being the most recent addition, I intend to continue to photograph this country and others in the region in order to archive the constantly evolving urban landscape.
THE SHAPE OF TIME ( 2011-2013 )
This series is inspired from Gaston Bachelard's book ' The Poetics of Space' In which Bachelard explains his focus on the poetic image for it being the property of the innocent consciousness, something which precedes conscious thought, and is the direct product of the soul. This direct relation of poetry to reality, for Bachelard, intensifies the reality of perceived objects.
The images below capture ephemeral moments in which a space is altered into a newly defined dimension through a combination of light and shadow. This physical composition comes to life for a few seconds before it shifts or disappears into an alternate state - the reality of the fleeting moment becoming nothing more then a past memory.
“Therefore, the places in which we have experienced day dreaming reconstitute themselves in a new daydream, and it is because our memories of former dwelling-places are relived as day-dreams these dwelling-places of the past remain in us for all the time.” ― Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space