On telling stories at the end of the world

Can you share a bit about your decision to be home in Lebanon making work? What was that journey and how do you have the will to keep creating?

Just being here is a form of resistance—accepting that I’m not going to run away or leave my home. It’s important to me to be here and tell stories rather than be somewhere I don’t relate to. I’m not going to photograph someone else’s culture. And it’s not only about the stories; it’s about being around people who understand me and understand the pain we all go through collectively. There’s such a strong community here, and that’s what’s beautiful. We push each other to make things. When I moved back, my storytelling became so much stronger, because these are real stories of real people. Before, I was trying to live some sort of American Hollywood dream, and then I realized, no, this is not for me. You learn technique, but storytelling comes from within.

There’s a concept Adam Curtis wrote about called hypernormalisation, this idea that we’ve all accepted a fake version of the world because the real one is too complex to deal with. That seems to speak directly to what you’re describing, both in America and in Beirut, in different ways.

That’s the whole illusion of the United States. Underneath the surface, something much darker is happening, but people just keep going. Everyone is in their bubble; they don’t see what’s outside, what’s really happening. I’ve experienced it directly. When I was working in America during the revolution here in Lebanon, I was crying a lot, and my boss told me I was too sensitive, too much. But they’re desensitized. Their reality is just the veneer. It’s a lack of empathy, a complete inability to see outside your own perspective. The danger is that you stop being able to feel what’s actually happening, to yourself or to anyone else. And once you lose that, what are you making? What are you living for?

Has your relationship to reality shifted since making work at home?

Completely. I only lived four years in the States, but I was always running, always feeling like I needed to leave. I had to leave to realize I needed to come back. There’s a kind of toxic love with Lebanon—you always feel like you can’t be here. But now I’ve fallen in love with it, and when you feel like your home might be taken from you, you want to stay more. Even when you’re just surviving, when your safety is under constant threat. People don’t realize any of this until it happens to them. You’re oblivious until it does. Sensitivity gets frowned upon, but feeling what others feel is powerful, even if it’s a lot to carry.

So much of what you’ve talked about is storytelling and preserving stories. Given Lebanon’s suffering—especially in recent years, but really throughout a long history—how do you balance telling those stories without getting too stuck in the pain?

Identity politics play a bigger role for me now. Coming back and living through all of this, back to back and with no time to cope, you start to see how erasure works. Cultural erasure, artisanal erasure. It’s critical that we return to the past, but renew it with a contemporary sensibility that still carries the history. Right now I’m working on an archive of my grandfather’s photographs and I’m turning it into a book coming out next year. The idea is that resistance has always been there, from the very beginning.

You physically cut, stitch, tear, and burn photographic material. Those acts seem to mirror the themes of the work: destruction, memory, rebuilding. What does working that way provide that a digital process does not?

For me, an image isn’t complete when it’s beautiful or perfect. I find beauty in the mistakes. I love when mistakes happen because that’s a new form, a new variable I can put into the equation of building something. An image exists, and I want to break it down and rebuild it. The trial and error is beautiful. You’re trying new things, risking things, cutting, tearing, just seeing what comes of it. It’s the perfect analogy for how we live here: things burn to the ground, but there’s the willingness to rebuild. I also work with burning. A lot of what I burn are plastic images that I print on fabric and different mediums. I burn them, then reflect light through them, which creates another image from the back. It’s a form of shadow play, the way a single image can be seen in entirely different ways.

As someone who has always worked with analog processes and film, what do you make of the larger cultural trend of people returning to analog as a counter to the oversaturated experience of the digital?

It’s interesting, because for me it is so personal. My mother gave me my first film camera. That was how photography entered my life, and I’ve been doing the same thing for 15 years. It’s nice that people are trying to return to it. It’s an expensive medium, but it’s so tactile and full of surprises. Shooting on film makes you pause and think. With a digital camera, or AI, you’re just shooting constantly. I’m terrible with technology. I actually hate it. If you make me sit at a computer, it has to be by force. Where is the time to sit down, think, and capture what you truly want to envision?

Has your relationship to creativity changed since moving back to Beirut?

Documenting suffering is not something I want to do. What matters to me is documenting memory and lived experience. Life here is very unstable. At the beginning of the war I was in bed for weeks, sleeping 16 hours a day, unable to do anything. But then I remembered that I need to put what I feel into my work. All the pain, all the collective suffering—you put it into the work. That’s why there are so many incredible artists here.

Are you someone who goes to the studio on a schedule, or do ideas come to you more spontaneously?

I built my own studio in my house. I go in when I feel the need. But it takes a lot out of me. I built it the way I need it, with different ways of working: sewing is more therapeutic, soldering is more intense. It depends on how I feel, or when the moment comes. I like living where I make. Routine helps, but because life here is so chaotic, you have to adapt your routine to it. The routine also helps you detach from everything going on. There’s something about working with your hands that puts you in a meditative state. I remember once I was soldering and the drones were outside with this constant, 24-hours-a-day sound that’s supposed to instigate fear, that gives you chronic threat in your body. You feel like at any point something might happen. Every day being the end of the world means you stop waiting for the right moment to make.

What are some misconceptions people have about sustaining an art practice?

Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. But whatever I earn from a job, I put back into my work. That’s what it takes: really falling in love with what you do. And believing in yourself, because sometimes you’re the only one who does. You also have to keep reassuring yourself that things take time. You need to sit with your work. It doesn’t always need to be shown. Hyper-posting and hyper-sharing won’t make the work better. What will is time—working on something, and sometimes leaving it on the wall for years before coming back to it in a completely different headspace.

What do you wish more people knew about Lebanon?

Every corner is a different world, a different culture and feel. Our coastline from south to north is beautiful. My mother is from the South and my father from the North, and they met in Beirut in the center. It’s interesting to come from two different borders. And still, they found love in the middle. You can find that love anywhere in this country. I started reading Mahmoud Darwish during the war, sitting on a little staircase near my house with headphones on to block out the sounds. It says:

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others (do not forget the pigeon’s food).

As you conduct your wars, think of others (do not forget those who seek peace).

As you pay your water bill, think of others (those who are nursed by clouds).

As you return home, to your home, think of others (do not forget the people of the camps).

As you sleep and count the stars, think of others (those who have nowhere to sleep).

As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others (those who have lost the right to speak).

As you think of others far away, think of yourself (say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”). That’s our people. Hospitable, kind, adaptable, brave. Putting their lives at risk to save each other. They’ve been through so much—they just want to live. To tend to their gardens, see their children grow up without suffering.