« Portraitscape of war» (Lebanon 2006)
As a freelancer without affiliations to any particular news outlet, I am not under pressure to create dramatic Front Page photographs of daily spot news events. The way I see it, my job is to find the stories in between and on the side of the main events—history’s liminal moments. These become pieces in the bigger puzzle drawn by all the players in the theatre of war: civilians, journalists, military personnel, NGO and agency workers, artists, writers, et cetera. Freelancers also have a luxury many staffers don’t have: time. Without an imminent job back home, the freelancer is free to stay and probe for longer, even when the headline news has died down. This is particularly the case in the aftermath of a major conflict. I made these diptychs of portraits and landscapes in Lebanon during, and in the aftermath of, the Hezbollah-Israel conflict in the summer of 2006 (July 12 – August 14, 2006).
