Sweet talks: Commissions (streets 1991-1994)
The Lebanese artist Walid Raad claims to have found several photographs in a book at a flea market in Beirut in 1994. They consist of streetscapes of Beirut, made by an overlooked Lebanese photographer, Ahmed Helou. The pictures were found with anonymous hand-written inscriptions in English and Arabic. Each depicted street is ascribed a specific memory, clearly occurring during the Lebanese civil war: a first kiss, a mother leaving, learning to launch a grenade, or a brother joining the Christian militia. Some of these writings refer to the war-associated pictures that they inhabit, while others speak to more universal notions of loss, love and a coming of age.
These writings are small manipulations that alter the true stories of the war photographs, allowing them to break out of their photographic background and change the narrative of these static images. In all honesty, we are unsure as to whether the moments written here actually took place in these specific locations, or if they even took place at all.
