Courtesy of the photographers (from left to right and top to bottom): Ieva Saudargaite Douaihi, Elie Bakhazi, Mayssa Khoury, Laura Menassa, Elsie Haddad and Marie-Noelle Fattal.
Initially scheduled for November, the Beirut Photo Festival had been indefinitely postponed as a result of the war and tragedy engulfing the region. But photographer Patrick Baz had no intention of waiting — or making the new generation wait, weighed down by an economic crisis.
"We don't have the right to stop,” Baz says. “It's a form of resistance. Life goes on. So, with Marine Bougaran, we decided to continue, at all costs. We spoke to Unesco about it and they gave us the green light.”
"If you can still party in certain regions, then you can also defend culture," he told L’Orient-Le Jour.
With the support of the Beryt project and the Institut Français du Liban, the Beirut Photo Week festival returns from June 3 to 9. It will be supported by the Beirut Center for Photography (BCP), of which Baz is the president, as well as the Soura association and its founder Marine Bougaran.
The festival’s organizers aim to promote diversity in artistic expression through photography in Lebanon by providing a platform for showcasing recent work.
One of the festival’s recurring themes is artificial intelligence, a sensitive topic in the field of photography. Photographer Thierry Van Biesen is devoting a workshop and a meeting to the topic. Baz and Paul Zougheib will discuss misinformation on social networks, artificial images and more, in Arabic, with the hopes of reaching a wider audience in the country.
Organizers are also intentionally creating a space where emerging artists mingle with established professionals, displaying their work alongside each other. Soura co-founder Marine Bougaran explains that "several associations have come together around common values such as education, support, guidance and distribution, and Beirut Photo is an opportunity for professionals and amateurs alike to develop skills in this field.”
Photo Booth, fair and exhibition
This year, the festival is launching the Beirut Photo Booth with Marie-Noëlle Fattal, Élie Bekhazi and Thierry Van Biesen, giving the public a chance to have their photos taken in playful settings, alone, with family or friends, and leave with a unique print.
Some thirty photographers will exhibit their work and books at Station on June 8 and 9, from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. The artists will be present, giving visitors a chance to meet photographers behind the photographs and show their support. As always, a percentage of sales will be donated to the BCP and Soura to support Lebanese photography.
This year, thanks to the support of Unesco's Beryt project and the French Institute, the Fragments exhibition is on show at Rebirth Beirut until June 9.
Three emerging photographers will present three original projects developed in close collaboration with Patrick Baz, Gilbert Hage and Caroline Tabet around the notion of fragments, bringing together three radically different worlds.
Baz points to programs designed to support photographers in Lebanon, such as Picto Concept, which lends cameras to those who don't have any, to Rebirth Beirut, which lends its space.
Full details of Beirut Photo Week are available here.