One of the latest series from the Lebanese photographer Randa Mirza, Beirutopia, takes the viewer into the urban imaginary of Beirut, which is currently rebuilding itself: “In that sense, I’m not original. After the war, many Lebanese photographers took on the theme of reconstruction.” Instead, it’s her approach that catches the eye. In her photos, reality collides with the city of dreams which appears on the scaffolding surrounding buildings under construction. The series is “easy,” says Mirza. “All you have to do is wait for the right moment to shoot: someone walking by, a car, a shadow.” But it’s not all easy: “I was traveling across the city on a motorcycle. When I saw something that interested me, I stopped and waited. But I had problems with the army while photographing military zones. Beirut isn’t the kind of city where you go walking around with a camera around your neck. People are suspicious.”
Building Beirutopia required two years of sporadic work, during which she never lost sight of her two audiences, “the Lebanese, on whom I depend to understand the city, and foreigners, to whom I introduce this misunderstood city,” and who are still haunted by images of Beirut as a fifteen-year battlefield. Beirutopia presents them with “a futurist city in 3D.” On these photographs, posters appear alongside pieces of reality. Some are damaged and torn like dashed dreams.
The subjects that inspire Randa Mirza are usually related to Lebanon, her homeland, which she has sometimes left behind to recover it better in pictures. “With distance, you develop an imagination, a fantasy which allows you to reflect on certain projects.” In Marseille, where she has lived for the past year and a half, she has yet to take a picture. Leaving Lebanon is also a life choice. “The Lebanese media is overloaded right now. The only way to get out of it was to become a photojournalist and cover war,” something which she has done for a year and a half, covering the Syrian conflict along with another journalist. But she wanted time away
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil.
