Entr'actes
Old shops in Beirut on the way of disappearance
Old shops in Beirut on the way of disappearance
Back in the days, neighborhoods in Beirut were full of small shops supplying the diverse needs of its residents; they formed an integral part of the city and its dynamics.
In these neighborhoods, everybody knew everybody by name. The owner’s popular persona made their shops an ideal place for social encounters and human bonding.
That was before the civil war, fifteen years, followed by a huge wave of construction imposing major changes on the city; the rise of big malls and franchise brands saw these shops struggle to keep up with the needs of the modern consumer, eventually they ended up on the margin of the new city,
With their disappearance, I fear our memories of a certain history will be erased.
These mixed feelings of nostalgia and anxiety pushed me towards working on these series, I searched for these places and I found a world somehow suspended between life and death, between past and future.
This is an attempt to retrace fragments of stories on the way the city was once and will never be again.
2010-2011
Publications
Inge Morath online magazine in April 2012 (The whole series)
http://www.ingemorath.org/index.php/2012/04/elsie-haddad-entractes-2/
Fugacité photo book collection, April 2013
http://www.plan-bey.com/publications/photo-books/fugacite/
Exhibitions
"On Fleeting Grounds" collective exhibition at Gallerie Janine Rubeiz, January 2013
http://www.galeriejaninerubeiz.com/pages/archive.php?lang=en
