Back to Lebanon?

May 27, 2008

By now you’ve all heard (I hope) that Lebanon has elected a new president and all is provisionally going well. There are tales of optimism and celebration, and the protesters have packed up and moved out of the downtown area.

Since the war with Israel in July of 2006 I have struggled with the notion of a return trip, and for a long time it seemed like I’d never get back there. But it is something I have to do.

For a variety of reasons it is something that I am going to have to pursue sooner rather than later if I am to do it at all. When I move to Buffalo in 2010 I will be financially shaky (moving is expensive!) and my new job will likely not be offering the kind of vacation time I have now until I’ve been there for a few years. It’s now or… a really long time from now for me and Lebanon.

One of the major reasons is what I see as unfinished business with the photography that I started there. Not only did my out-of-practice condition render a lot of good images unusable due to foolish mistakes, but I also started to feel a little twinge of ridiculousness when I put up all of my images and realized: I only had images from just two very tourist-y areas.

Don’t get the wrong idea. I have no intention of marching into Palestinian refugee camps and shooting indiscriminately.

But there are other possibilities - especially out in the countryside. I have never been much of a landscape photographer, but would still like to give it a try.

I also feel that I missed a few important images. I avoided the bullet-ridden and foreboding, of which there are less and less and less as they continue to improve and rebuild. This might have been a mistake. It seems the kind of thing that my style would mesh with quite well, if I stopped regarding them as unapproachable. Same goes for mosques - my host had offered to stop and shoot at a few of them, but not being entirely clear on the etiquette of such a shoot I backed away from the possibility.

One of the more interesting conversations that I had at the opening for Photographing Lebanon was with a Lebanese citizen who thought I was white-washing Lebanon, only focusing on the aesthetically interesting, dismissing the people, and ignoring the terrible recent history that they had been through. I did my best to explain that there are dozens of amazing photojournalists who have done some incredible work for a variety of news outlets. They are great at what they do and have documented the country’s difficulties - especially on a personal level - far better than I could. It is also very easy to find these kinds of images. They are all over the news media.

What I ended up with in the show was far different, however. I saw some amazing beauty when I was there and did my best to capture what was in front of me. The Lebanon that I never saw in the newspaper. Admittedly I now cast some doubt on my set of images that only shows progress and ancient history, ignoring the recent past, but perhaps this is something that I will find a solution for on a return trip via the shells of buildings that dot the landscape.

My time there was wonderful. The people were very nice to me and were very curious (in a good way) about what I was up to and why I was there. When I explained (either directly or through my host) that I was photographing everything that struck me as beautiful in their country, they were even more warm to me and wished me well in my travels. Once they realized that I was not there to yet again portray Lebanon the terrible, they were very supportive.

Politics did not come up. Ever.

Am I being shamelessly naïve and We-Are-The-World? Very possibly. But I can only go on what I saw and how people behaved towards me. Even the few raised eyebrows that I received because of the photography worked out in the end with no issues. Interestingly, after explaining my position at the opening reception I later found that my Lebanese detractor had taken the time to leave a comment in my guest book that amounted to: “thank you for showing the beauty of my homeland”. I suspect that many Lebanese are tired of everyone being scared away from their country by endless political issues.

So I’m going back. At the moment I am looking at October. Unfortunately it looks like airfares will be significantly higher than the last time I went, so there is always that end to sort out (and potentially pull the idea off the table, depending on the final cost - ugh).

Anyone know any good grants? Start one of your own! The “Send Jim To Lebanon Fund” has a nice ring to it.

p.s. I will have a post on Buffalo soon… no, really.

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