About the Work
To a first-time visitor, the Corniche at Beirut could be taken for the French Riviera. In the evening, fish are on sale and are displayed on boards laid on the pavement.
The place where I took these photographs is directly opposite the former US Embassy which was sold some years ago and is now being redeveloped. Here a lorry load of explosives was driven through its entrance on 18 April 1983 killing 63 people and introducing a new weapon for use against the West and its clients - the suicide bomber.
Places That Shaped Today's Middle East
The news coming to us daily from the Middle East give us the impression of a battle zone continuously erupting with violence and mayhem. The photojournalist or news broadcaster's job is to seek out the news-worthy event. Rarely do they focus on the quiet before the storm - the moments between events when ordinary life continues.
While travelling through Lebanon and Syria in 2006 - it struck me that the day-to-day reality of people living under those conditions differed greatly from the news-worthy images sent to us via our media. Most of the time very little was happening. What was of the real interest was how the people there lived out their ordinary lives in a landscape scarred with traces of its violent past and present.
It was the ordinary sitting side-by side with the extraordinary that became the subject of Places That Shaped Today's Middle East. Delving into the regions more distant past I tried to trace that legacy through to the present day - excavating the present situation for evidence of a place's historical resonance while somehow capturing the stillness of the quiet before the storm
″I still use the same approach to my work: I get an idea, think of the title and then make the work. So not much has changed since 1964″
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