ITINERARIES TO TRANSLUCENCY TALK AT BEIRUT ART CENTER
Newspaper excerpt showing Beirut in 1980/81, from the archive of Horst Sturm, Berlin, 2011.
My interest is not in the officially distributed press images of martyrs, but in the photographs that capture intimate moments of friendship: an informal dinner after a workshop; walking in the streets in Beirut; Sturm with Fedayeen in South Lebanon; and the Palestinian students inspecting their film in the studio in Beirut—images showing the very conditions of photographic production during the period. There are only a few images of this kind, not to be considered an archive but perhaps a set of "souvenirs" (as Jean Genet called his written memories of being with the Palestinians and the Black Panthers). As a group, these photographs have become itineraries to guide research into the geographically dispersed production of images haunted by a socialist internationalism. What is an image that comes from there?
http://www.beirutartcenter.org/parallel-events.php?exhibid=216&statusid=2