Lebanon, despite homelessness...
Portraits of families
Blast, corruption, hyperinflation, unemployment, sectarian organization… a people still standing.
“Even if they don’t fight in the streets, even though the political class is like a cancer that thrives on sectarian divides, people start to think now. The revolution is only a moment in history, what is important is what we do with it after. The demonstrations go beyond the communities, people take to the streets not as Maronite, Sunni or Shiite but as Lebanese.”
Carmen KHOURY, Physiology teacher at University of Balamand, Beirut,
interviewed on January 9, 2021
The images tell us a reality beyond despair, a positive Lebanon despite a hard reality that these photos do not hide, beyond the kneeling Lebanon presented to us by the media, a Lebanon of portraits of families, a Lebanon which, in the depths of the crisis, goes beyond community tensions.
Despite fear, rage and despair, those Lebanese, beyond sectarian divisions, still believe in a future for their country. How else to explain they are still standing.
Khaled Joma and his wife Aadawiya; Hiba, 15, and her mother Thathaa; Denise Najen El Dinn, her 3 children and her adopted daughter Joulie; Saïd Sheikh El Zein and his 8 children; Saleh, his 4 children and his brother Adna; Mahmoud Soubhy; Mahmoud Najjar; Zakiye widowed since 1949 and her niece Kadija; Brahim, Hussein and the old man, Aktar, Muhamad; Arpi Mangassarian and her 100-year-old parents Noubar and Marie; Lozy, Mellicent, Caroline and Moureen; Tarka and her son Sleiman, Amira and her baby Hussein; Joshua; Mosleh; Abraham Tchilingirian; Leila Khalil; Rola Kaddoura; Georges Haddad; 20 families, 20 stories, 20 portraits.
A mosaic of portraits across communities living in Lebanon: Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Syrian refugees, Palestinians, Bangladeshis, Armenians, Kenians, Filipinos, laymen, Catholics, Druze, Armenian orthodox, Orthodox, Maronites, journalist...
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“I saw Shia Muslims, Sunnis, Jews, Orthodox Christians, others not, I saw them drinking this coffee served by Abraham the Armenian and Mahmoud the Palestinian. I saw them talk to each other, laugh, cry and be afraid together too, loving each other like two brothers celebrating their difference."
Thomas, January 2021
Lebanon, Dec. 2020, Jan. 2021