BEIRUT PANODRAMA’S (Lebanon, 1977-2004)
In 1977 Paul Gofferjé worked as a volunteer photographer for a Christian school for the deaf in Beirut. He arrived during the first ceasefire in fifteen years. Naïve as he was, Gofferjé went out into Beirut to photograph the city, although journalists were being murdered and kidnapped. In 2004 he returned and showed ten photographs from his archive on the street. It proved difficult to find the places again where he had made the photos: new construction had erased the past. Gofferjé was approached by people who were surprised that as early as 1977 so may buildings had already been damaged. They began to tell their stories, parts of which have been written out on the panoramas that Gofferjé made in 2004.