Conference by Gregory Buchakjian
11.04.2017
At Saradar Collection Offices
Saradar Collection is organizing a series of encounters for the members of the Saradar Group around its art collection. For our next conference we propose to have a closer look on the work of Lebanese photographer Fouad Elkoury.
Born in 1952, Fouad Elkoury studied architecture, however intuitively became a photographer. In 1991, he participated, with major practitioners in a photographic mission in the ruins of the Beirut city center. Since then, his work has been shown in major museums and institutions worldwide.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Elkoury documented life and survival of people in a country doomed by violence and destruction. Nevertheless, he is not what we commonly call as a war photographer. Depicting situations of crisis, but also intimacy, leisure and resilience, his Civil War series is rather a testimony of sensibility and humanity.
Gregory Buchakjian (b. 1971) is a Beirut based art historian and photographer, assistant professor at Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA). His research evolves around modern and contemporary Lebanese and Arab art. He is PhD graduate at Université Paris IV Sorbonne for a dissertation entitled: «Abandoned Dwellings in Beirut. Wars and Transformation of the Urban Space.2015-1860» and a member of the Saradar Collection advisory committee.