Time Regained I - Levant
Lebanon, Syria, Jordan 2003-2008
Lebanon, Syria, Jordan 2003-2008
The photographs presented here are a personal reflection of my ten-year stay in the Middle East. In August 2002, I moved from London to Beirut to work as an art director in an advertising agency and spent a full year observing the country and its people before actually picking up the camera. Initially my aim was to portray everyday life in Lebanon, but over time I became obsessed with discoveries of remnants of another time, a time that coincides with my childhood, in an entirely different corner of the world. After moving to Dubai in 2005, I continued to seek similar themes as I travelled across the region and beyond.
The pattern that was gradually emerging over the years was that of a personal journey into memory - an attempt to retrace my childhood lived in Tito's, multi-ethnic, multi-confessional, socialist-yet-pro-Western Yugoslavia of the 1970's and early 1980's, but in a different time and different geographic space. The unusual mix of urban and man-altered natural landscapes, references to contrasting religious iconography and worship rituals, political and patriarchal authority figure portraits, vintage American cars, street scenes and period interiors are a testament to the prevailing spirit of the times.
Ten years on, it became apparent that the project is perhaps less about reliving childhood than the incapacity to escape it, wherever in the world I happen to be - an introspective lament to Yugoslavia's idealised 'golden era', the laid-back, comfortable lifestyle, the welfare state, the security and apparent general prosperity that people of my generation grew up with and lost with the break-up of the country and the subsequent devastation of economic, social, moral and cultural values.
Or alternatively, it's just a figment of my imagination.
The pattern that was gradually emerging over the years was that of a personal journey into memory - an attempt to retrace my childhood lived in Tito's, multi-ethnic, multi-confessional, socialist-yet-pro-Western Yugoslavia of the 1970's and early 1980's, but in a different time and different geographic space. The unusual mix of urban and man-altered natural landscapes, references to contrasting religious iconography and worship rituals, political and patriarchal authority figure portraits, vintage American cars, street scenes and period interiors are a testament to the prevailing spirit of the times.
Ten years on, it became apparent that the project is perhaps less about reliving childhood than the incapacity to escape it, wherever in the world I happen to be - an introspective lament to Yugoslavia's idealised 'golden era', the laid-back, comfortable lifestyle, the welfare state, the security and apparent general prosperity that people of my generation grew up with and lost with the break-up of the country and the subsequent devastation of economic, social, moral and cultural values.
Or alternatively, it's just a figment of my imagination.
1 Across the Street
Beirut, Lebanon, 2003
Beirut, Lebanon, 2003
2 Siesta
3 Pieta
4 Wild Horses
5 Long Term Parking
6 Father Figure I
Tripoli
Tripoli
7 Rampage
8 Drive-thru Chapel
9 Domestic Altar
10 Religion 'To Go'
11 House by the Sea
12 Taxi Pet
13 Stop
14 Taxi Cockpit
15 Father Figure II
Tripoli,
Tripoli,
16 Room With A View
17 Candidate
Tripoli
Tripoli
18 Angry Sea
19 School Bus
20 Shoe Maker
21 Spiritual Ignition
22 Father Figure III
23 Father Figure IV
24 Street Life
25 Rhapsody In Shocking Blue
26 Play Station
