"Passing Time" by Fouad Elkoury / book signing Beirut
Meet the Artist
Fouad Elkoury
After qualifying as an architect in London, in 1979, Elkoury turned to photography, producing a report on daily life in Lebanon. His images appeared in Libération and other publications. In 1984, he published Beyrouth Aller–Retour, documenting the life of a war-torn city. In 1991 he and other photographers were commissioned to take part in a project in downtown Beirut, to document the aftermath of war. This was later published in an album entitled Beirut City Centre, by Editions du Cyprès, Paris, and was the subject of an exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in 1993. The book has since become a milestone in the history of photography. In 1997, Elkoury co-founded the Beirut-based Arab Image Foundation, an organization that seeks to archive and preserve photography from the region. The following year he moved to Turkey and produced an extensive photographic travelogue, the last of his exclusively photographic series. In 2002, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris commissioned him to create an exhibition for which he presented a new collection of photographic compositions, incorporating sequential images to emphasize meaning. As part of the exhibition he premiered his first video Lettres à Francine, based on his photographs of Turkey. The exhibition catalog, Sombres, is published by Marval. Since then, he has alternated between photography and video, as well as writing, with his first text, La Sagesse du Photographe, published in Paris in 2004.
Works by the Artist
Meet the Author
Manal Khader
Manal Khader is a writer, editor and actress based in Beirut. She is one of the founders of Kalamon – a Beirut based cultural quarterly review – and co-editor of the publication from 2010 to 2015. Manal plays leading and supporting roles in Arab and international films and in 2015, she co-wrote and performed with Rabih Mroué a theatrical play entitled "Ode to Joy”.
Works by the Author
Meet the Artist
Gregory Buchakjian
Gregory Buchakjian (b. 1971) is an art historian and visual interdisciplinary artist, Université Paris IV Sorbonne PhD, director of the School of Visual Arts at Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts – Alba. His work focuses on city and history with books such as Fouad Elkoury, Passing Time (Kaph Books: 2017) and Traversées Photographiques. Le journal du Docteur Cottard (Arab Image Foundation: 2017). In 2018, he released the publication Abandoned Dwellings, A History of Beirut (Beirut, Kaph Books: 2018, Valerie Cachard, ed.) and the exhibition Abandoned Dwellings, Display of Systems, at Sursock Museum, Beirut, 2018, curated by Karina El Helou. In 2018 also, his Fragments from the Ridge Line were part of first Lebanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture while Fragments from the History of Civil Aviation in Lebanon were among the Works on Paper accompanying the exhibition Cycles of Collapsing Progress. Member of the advisory committee of the Saradar Collection, he took part in juries including Sursock Museum Salon d’Automne (2009), Boghossian Prize (2012), Beirut Art Center’s Exposure (2013) and Beirut Art Residency (2017).
