Paola Yacoub
Summer 88
2006
| Black and white photographs | 42.5 x 56 cm
The stark and grainy black and white photographs of Summer
88 were shot at the height of the civil war; they were
taken with no particular aim as Yacoub assisted a photojournalist
who was documenting surveillance operations and fighting in
down town Beirut. The pictures are the product of an unreserved
departure from the conventional practices of documentary photography.
Instead of focusing on the events or on the effects of the
war, Yacoub captured photographs of the ordinary amid devastation
as seen through her eyes. Paola Yacoub’s series is not an
exposé on ruins or on architecture. It is an anthology of
snapshots procured as a consequence of fear and a rendering
of the effects of fright on a city at war. Her chilling images
reveal the impossibility of representing destruction neutrally
as they criss-cross the fine line that separates objective
documentation from subjective viewpoint.
Born in Beirut in 1966, Paola Yacoub has worked with the artist
Michel Lassere as her associate since 1996. The two investigate
the expressive potential of spaces via their articulation
of embedded aesthetic and political meanings.
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