photo beirut

a few things that caught my eye

 

US in the Middle East

The longer I live in Beirut the harder it is to see the place as a visitor from the US would see it. But the other day, while attending some panels at the Beirut Media Forum, I heard a talk by the smart and informed journalist and press critic, Michael Massing who was visiting for just a few days. [He often writes for the New York Review of Books, which is where I have read his critiques of US press coverage of the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq and later of coverage of the war itself.] He has spent time in Iraq but had not been to Beirut before. His talk explained the various impediments to reporting from Iraq –- non-Arabic speaking journalists, violence restricting their movements and interactions with Iraqis, the embed system of tagging along with American military units leading to isolation from other points of view, and lack of trust in Iraqi sources. I appreciated the talk, even though most was nothing particularly new especially if you've read his work, because I like straightforward analysis of how journalism works and what that means for readers’ understanding of the world.

Massing’s concluding point was also interesting. He explained that in order for a story to be told it has to be recognized as a story by the journalist, then the editor, and lastly it must fit within the bounds of what the public is willing to hear and tolerate. The location of these boundaries is something he has been noticing more lately. All societies have boundaries of what’s acceptable or not, but this part is distressing to me as he described the US public as still largely affected by an atmosphere of “fear, distrust, and xenophobia” since September 11, 2001.

Massing mentioned that the US is still very isolated from Arab views. For example, US cable companies don’t carry the new Al Jazeera International, which is in English. At the beginning of the talk he had admitted that seeing Beirut made him realize how misinformed he was on the situation and the city itself. I later asked him what surprised him. He had a couple of examples. He explained how he had taken a walk around the neighborhood of Hamra and from its appearance had assumed it was the Christian part of town, which he had been led to believe was more Western than the Muslim areas of Beirut. He was surprised to learn later that Hamra is not the Christian area but a mostly Muslim neighborhood. And when he was given a tour of the southern suburbs (Dahiyya) where Hizballah is the most popular party and has its various offices, he noticed that not all the women are swathed in black and there aren’t mullahs on every corner (he was poking fun at the stereotype too, I doubt he really expected that...did he?).

Also surprising to him was the effect of US support for the current majority (called the March 14th forces) in the Lebanese government. He seemed surprised to learn from people here how the US does not support compromise with the opposition (which is led by Hizballah). He said that the US stance of no compromise seems to stem from its “with us or against us” mindset and black and white definition of allies and enemies in the Middle East.

I too find this very frustrating. The more the US marginalizes, undermines and refuses to deal in any way with forces such as Hizballah and Hamas or countries like Iran and Syria the more their supporters and others will resist anything to do with the US. Any US support of democracy, human rights, NGOs, arts and education in the region, for example, then becomes tainted by this one-sided position and renders everything the US does here suspect and partisan in many people’s eyes.

One way for the US to do things differently is to interfere less directly (especially in the use of military force) and reduce the sense of threat that those not supported by the US in the region feel. By allowing the broadest range of voices and giving the region as a whole a sense of security and autonomy, internal forces can more freely work out new social and political relations on their own terms.

Now for something entirely different -- a new graffiti image on Jeanne D'Arc street of the French character from the book The Little Prince.

The words say "come to my heart."

[Here's the original Petit Prince, drawn by the author of the book, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in 1943.]  

Politics of Youth: New issue of Middle East Report out

The latest issue of Middle East Report, Winter 2007, is out. I wrote about my work finding photos for this issue recently, in this post.

 

Here's the press release:

Middle East Report 245
Winter 2007

THE POLITICS OF YOUTH

In many countries of the Middle East, as in other developing regions, young people between the ages of 15 and 24 make up a fifth or more of the population. These youth face serious socio-economic problems, including unemployment, under-employment and delayed marriage, but not the least of their burdens are the expectations and anxieties of their elders. In recent decades, indeed, youth have come to be seen as a problem in and of themselves. "The Politics of Youth," the winter 2007 issue of Middle East Report, measures the image against reality.

Anthropologist Ted Swedenburg sketches the "imagined youths" that preoccupy policy planners and pundits in the Middle East and the West. Youth are perceived both as people who need to be protected -- from radical political Islam or from "vulgar" popular culture -- and people from whom the social order may need to be protected. A corollary, among Western observers, is to see youth as the inevitable emancipators of closed political systems.

Real Middle Eastern youth confound elite hopes and fears in ways both conventionally political and mundane. In Egypt, finds political scientist Marc Lynch, young Muslim Brothers are challenging their older leaders' platforms and habits of mind with the open discussion fostered by their blogs. In Beirut, as Lara Deeb and Mona Harb demonstrate, the purchasing power of pious Shi'i youth is generating an "Islamic" culture of fun to parallel the hard-partying "Paris of the Middle East" downtown. In Israel, argues sociologist Tamir Sorek, young fans of Likud-supporting Beitar Jerusalem and the Arab team from Sakhnin both use the soccer stadium to demand full integration as citizens, rendering the Beitar-Sakhnin matches more than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in miniature.

In a special report, James McDougall checks in on the recovery of Algeria from its long and brutal civil war. Many of the war's deep causes remain in place: The options in formal politics are limited to opportunism or principled, but impotent opposition, while the newly liberalized economy is working best for those who were already prosperous.

Also featured: Norma Claire Moruzzi reviews Shahram Khosravi's Young and Defiant in Iran; Khaled El-Rouayheb reviews Joseph Massad's Desiring Arabs; Rosemary Sayigh reviews Laleh Khalili's Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine; and more.

Subscribe to Middle East Report or order individual copies online at www.merip.org.

Middle East Report is published by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a progressive, independent organization based in Washington, DC. Since 1971 MERIP has provided critical analysis of the Middle East, focusing on political economy, popular struggles and the implications of US and international policy for the region.

exploring ESA

I was at the Ecole Supérieure des Affaires (a French language business school) the other day for the Beirut Media Forum. The forum talks I attended were interesting, I might write about them here later. But even more fun for me was the semi-abandoned building on the ESA campus. The campus is sited in the former French diplomatic facilities and is pretty with red tiled roof buildings and lots of flowering plants. Below are my  photos of the old building they seem to use for storage.

Hashem El Madani Itinerary, by Akram Zaatari

On Saturday we took a trip to Saida (Sidon) to see Akram Zaatari's latest project involving the photography of Hashem El Madani, a commercial studio photographer from Saida. Madani opened his Studio Shehrazade in the early 1950s. In addition to studio portraits he also created wonderful portraits of people at their places of work. Forty-one of those that he took in the old district of Saida have been printed, framed and displayed in the original locations or in nearby cafes.

Visitors get a map that locates each photo and provides a thumbnail image of each along with a caption.

 

[Fragment of the map.]

Having a common purpose for wandering around the old district's narrow streets and to pop into various stores, workshops and cafés created a unique experience. Some shopkeepers kept working after we exchanged greetings, others wanted to point out something from the photo such as the elderly man who kept telling us the guy in the photo is his father. Some of the others following the itinerary took photos of him, while neighbors watching it all teased him affectionately.

I wondered if many of the Lebanese who were following the itinerary had been there before. In a way it seemed like a great method for creating a moment of mixing between Lebanese of different social classes and backgrounds. In addition to calling attention to the history of the area and of the role of studio photography in Saida, of course.

It helped me feel a bit less like the typical tourist. Being part of this mini whirlwind of visitors sweeping through to participate in an art exhibit created a different dynamic. I wasn't there just to look at a place but to participate in some kind of interaction, however brief and ephemeral.

The only drawback was that in such a stimulating environment I couldn't concentrate on the photos much. But perhaps that was as it should be. The text on the map explains: "The Madani Project [of which this project is just one part] takes the archive of Studio Shehrazade as study material to understand the complex relationship which ties a studio photographer to his working space, his equipment and tools, economy and aesthetics, and further explore his ties to his clients, society and the city in general." In this experience we visitors were placed into the actual physical environment and given the tools to imagine Madani out with his camera, taking the photos and building the relationships he needed for his business. On the other side, I was also compelled to wonder about Madani and Zaatari's relationship to the current shopkeepers and owners as they put this project together. What does this all mean to them and the other residents of the old district of Saida?

Below are some photos I took, which show the placement of the photos and the shops' current appearance. Sorry you can't see the original photos, for other work by Madani look into getting one of the excellent books Zaatari has published, such as Mapping Sitting or Hashem el Madani: Studio Practices.

Cobbler's shop. Photo 17 on the itinerary. In 1951, when the photo on the back wall (beyond the mirror) was taken, it was a watch sale and repair shop. The red symbol on the wall is the Arabic letter meem, or m, for Madani I assume. Each shop with a photo inside displays this symbol. This alleyway was my favorite visually, it was covered so many shops spilled out into the alley. Most were cobblers with grand old machines.

Photo 14. This shop is Mohamad Ali el Jardali Nouveauté, but in the early 1950s it was two shops, a calligraphy and paint shop and a place called Nouveauté Barsha.

Photo 3. This textile shop displays a photo that was not taken here originally, but nearby I guess. If you click on the scan of the map above you might be able to make out the thumbnail of the photo that is hung here.

 

 

Photo 23 (up from the fan, next to the mirror) shows Wafiq el Baba at the door of his shop Nouveauté el Baba taken in the late 1940s. It is now a barber shop called Salon el Anouar.

Photos 5, 7, 25 and 26 are placed in this café, Beb el Saray Café. The photos show men standing in front of a pharmacy, a tobacco, perfume and spice shop, a sandwich and tobacco kiosk, and two young men standing by a tree in the square. The green fruits on the right are oranges for making fresh juice.

Photo 29. This carpenter's shop was closed by the time we got there. In the early 1950s it was a pastry shop.

Representing youth in the Middle East

The Winter 2007 issue of Middle East Report will come out in a couple of weeks. It's main focus this time is the politics of youth. As photo editor it was my job to find the best photography we can afford to accompany the articles. Sadly, I discovered that photos of youth (I'm not talking about kids, but 15-24 year olds) largely correspond to the popular image of the region as repressed, stern, and violent.

[Below are some examples of the usual clichés. However, these are all very good photographers, whose work I respect.]

One of the more common images of Middle Eastern youth:

[Spencer Platt/Corbis]

My goal was to find photographs that show youth being youth. By this I mean doing things like going to university or school, working, hanging out with friends, playing sports, engaged in entertainment like amusement parks, picnics, shopping, cafes, and using the internet. While I did find some photos like this, the vast majority instead chose to represent young people engaged in political demonstrations and rallies, religious observances, or as victims of war, poverty and oppression. These images do capture some part of the reality of life in the region, the problem is that these extra-ordinary moments are the dominant image while the everyday is rarely seen.

Another very common image of youth:

[Atta Kenare/AFP]

There are exceptions, of course. For example, there has been much interest in the youth of Iran for years now. Primarily the focus has been on the Tehran upper and middle classes, those who go skiing, shop at high-end stores, and wear fashionable outfits that only barely abide by the Islamic Republics restrictions on dress. Those images have become fairly commonplace. So common in fact as to become already a bit of a cliché. At first this new image was helpful in breaking up the old stereotype about stern-faced youth covered in black chadors or wearing beards, shouting death to America. They showed what some Tehran youth are up to. It's important to see there are plenty of young people who party, play music, flirt, have fun. But how representative of youth in Iran are those photos? As far as I know, it's just one thin slice of the population. In addition to the photos of hip and trendy youth, I wish there were other images depicting a wider range of youth and their various tastes, activities, levels of religiosity, and socio-economic positions.

An example of the sexy young Iranian woman cliché:

[Lynsey Addario/Corbis]

...which is meant to be understood in opposition to this sort of image of faceless women in chadors.

[Rob Howard/Corbis]

Another big exception to the standard picture of Middle Eastern youth as stern, religious and radical is the image of young people hanging out in shopping malls. However, the popularity of this image comes, I think, from a widespread belief in the (false) dichotomy of "traditional" versus "modern." It seems editors and viewers get some sort of satisfaction from seeing a supposed contrast between men and women in modest dress and veils wandering past global fast food franchises or international brand name stores in the sleek, familiar space of a mall.

An example from Bahrain:

[Spencer Platt/Getty]

I think the problem lies in that feeling of familiarity that is found in the popular images of hip youth and mall goers. My guess is that these newer images are popular because they seem to contrast with what outsiders believe is the dominant culture in the region. Perhaps editors choose them because they depict Middle Easterners as familiar and similar to European and American viewers. We can relate. But at the same time they are seen as surprising because of the usual image of the region.

Unfortunately, what gets lost in this search for the familiar (or its opposite -- looking for the image of religious extremism) is a whole range of other people and experiences. One article in the next issue is about youth in the southern suburb of Beirut, an area called Dahiyya. It's the neighborhood that got a lot of press coverage last summer because Hizballah's media and other offices are located there. During the war Israeli airstrikes took out many residential/commercial buildings there. But this article is about something else entirely. It discusses how youth in this mostly Shiite area figure out what are Islamicly appropriate modes of entertainment for themselves, which is defined differently depending on the individual. Many of these religious young people want high quality, interesting places to spend time and see friends but they don't want the alcohol, popular music and certain norms of behavior between men and women that are present in cafes in other parts of Beirut. The authors discuss a variety of places these youth are comfortable hanging out, like certain sports clubs, sleekly designed internet cafes, segregated beaches, restaurants, an amusement park and a mall.

Searching for photos of youth in the Dahiyya, however, I could only find pictures of them in Hizballah rallies, listening seriously to Nasrallah's speeches, or sadly searching for belongings in the midst of the rubble after last summer's war. Granted, photographing In the Dahiyya isn't easy. The dominant news story, which shapes what editors want, is about Hizballah and the war. (I found very few photos from before the war, no one was interested at that point.) The other difficulty is gaining access. Hizballah controls journalists' visits, many don't get permission from the party to photograph in the area, and people are at times suspicious of a photographer's intentions.

But even knowing the difficulties, I can't help but be frustrated. Observant young Muslims (and indeed youth across the Middle East of all sorts) are as animated, smiley, independent and intelligent as any teenagers and yet they are rarely represented this way.

Two examples of images depicting youth in their everyday reality:

[Alexandria, Egypt. Mark Henley/Panos]

[Algiers, Algeria. Giacomo Pirozzi/Panos]

It seems that as a young person in the image world that represents the Middle East you are either provocatively pushing the bounds of conservative, traditional society (such as Tehran beauties, Beirut nightclubbers and consumers of "western" brands) or caught up senselessly in religiously-inspired politics and extremism.

These categories and assumptions need desperately to be challenged by image-makers and image-buyers. There are certainly photographers who are thoughtfully depicting the nuances of the real Middle East, but they also need to make a living licensing their work to magazines, newspapers and agencies that are often still stuck in these invidious ways of imagining the region. One photographer I spoke to here in Beirut who does good work said he was shocked as he looked through his own archive trying to find photos of youth involved in normal, everyday activities.  He found very little.

Meaning in graffiti

In March I started posting Beirut graffiti photos and made some comments on what I thought some of them might mean. In August I left a comment on the blog Leb Graffiti asking for any information on what the stencils mean. Just today I found this comment on my comment, which explains a lot about several of the stencil images I've photographed and is quite interesting.

Michelle, i just visited the link you have posted, photobeirut.typewhatever..and it seems your interpretation of the 3 people stencils is totally far from the real concept behind 3dom. I am 1 of the people behind it, we r 2 boys and a girl. We made 3 different stencils(posted in this site) using the 3 characters. The lovebombs were done by someone else, not us. His concept is simply bombing Beirut with love(obviously!). Neither him nor us,3dom, have anything to do with 11 march movement. The 11 march campaign came out, to our disgrace, a few days after we made our 1st stencil & it was a bad coincidence. WE ARE TOTALLY APOLITICAL. Our message is simply about breaking free from the constant tension of the lebanese media and the political situation in general. The 3 people holding hands in the air is simply an expression of happiness and unity of the 3 of us, when Lebanon was all about tension and negativity after the summer war. We were on our own trip, trying to break free from the country's stressful mindframe. We then continued within the same message, doing the 3 characters trying to pass through the metal bars(dont know how else to call them)that are all around beirut streets, blocking the way of cars. We wanted to revolt against having to drive slowly in zigzags just because some scared politician lives around the area! Next came our most recent stencil, of the 3 people pulling the tv plug. Obviously, we wanted to encourage those who spend their evenings on the news to break free from this stressfull network, and find something more pleasant to do.
Hope it's clearer now, we thought the msg would come across easily, without having to go thru so much explanation.
Cheers, 3dom

I'm going to correct the comments I made in the photo album. Seems that whoever told me the three people might be the March 11 movement was mistaken. This member of 3dom seems a bit exasperated at me for not getting the intended message. But I think this is a problem with most images, they are open to interpretation. I imagine lots of artists are frustrated by how their work is understood by others. And photojournalistic images can also be used to convey different things to different people. Examples abound, such as the one of the young Beirutis in a convertible touring the destruction of the southern suburbs that won a World Press Photo award. [I wrote about that here.]