Akram Zaatari
Saida, June 6, 1982 Blue print showing camera movement | 2006-2009
Composite image, C-print. 112 x 210 cm. Ed.2/5 + 2 AP
This print is a capture showing the camera movements from the video "Saida June 6, 1982" (2002, 90 sec), which is based on six still photographs that Zaatari took from the balcony of his parents’ apartment in Saida on June 6, 1982. It was the first day of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The artist was 16 years old, and had been learning photography using his father’s Kiev 35mm camera for more than a year. This is why he had his camera loaded and ready all the time to take pictures whenever an explosion or shelling occurred. In 1982, he had already photographed few insignificant air raids that were far in the south of Saida, including the bombing of the Zahrani Refinery. These were times Zaatari describes as absolute boredom as people of his age rarely went out except at school. This is how Zaatari started recording sound, taking notes, and photographs on a regular basis.
Reference AZ-PH-2006-A
Biography of the artist
Born in Saida, Lebanon. 1966
Works and Lives in Beirut
Zaatari’s practice is tied to the practice of collecting. His work reflects on the shifting nature of borders and the production and circulation of images in the context of the current political divisions in the Middle East. His videos and photographic installations look into technologies of image production and communication and the notions of surveillance, exploring the way different media apparatuses get employed in the service of power, resistance, and memory.
As co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation, Zaatari is deeply invested in examining how photography served to shape notions of aesthetics, postures and social codes,
therefore looking at the present through a wealth of past photographic records from the Middle East.
Zaatari has been focusing since 1999 on the archive of Studio Shehrazade in Saida (Lebanon) studying, indexing, and presenting the work of photographer Hashem el Madani (1928 -) as a register of social relationships and of photographic practices.
He is author of more than 40 videos such as 28 Nights and a Poem (2015), Letter to a Refusing Pilot (2013), Tomorrow everything will be alright (2010), Nature Morte (2008), In this House (2005), This Day (2003), All is well on the Border (1997). Part of his video work addressed the practice of sex in Lebanon’s current society, particularly in The End of Time (2013), Crazy of You (1997) and How I Love You (2001).
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