workshop: mapping memories

Media: photography
Date: November 2006
Location: Zibquin
Facilitators: Eric Gottesman / Mahmoud Zeidan
Participants: 13

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An account of the workshop by Eric Gottesman:

In November 2006, Lens on Lebanon invited me to begin work on a project in southern Lebanon. This project is still in process, but I will attempt to describe it below.

With LOL's Mahmoud Zeidan, I visited Zibquin, a town in the south, just a dozen kilometers from the border and the first town bombed in the 2006 war with Israel. Mahmoud introduced me to Wassim Bzeih, the leader of a youth group in Zibquin. I explained that I wanted to understand the impact of war on the lives of young people in the town. Specifically, I was interested in how memory works for people who live in an area where war is a constant threat and an occasional reality. Wassim asked me to return the next day and he would try to find interested participants.

The next day, I started working with six 18-21 year-olds, all of whom were women except Wassim (the other boys and men were busy clearing the rubble and rebuilding the town's architecture); the group would later grow to include twelve women. I taught the participants to use Polaroid cameras. I asked them to draw maps of their town from their childhood, with as much detail as possible, and to mark one spot on their map from which they have a specific memory.

We then went to that site and each participant used the Polaroid camera to make a photograph of the reenactment of his/her memory. Wassim reenacted the time he broke his leg. One girl replayed the memory of her first date. Ihsan made a photograph of herself stealing fruit from the neighbors' yard.

Once we made the "Polaroid-memories," I wanted to find a way to relate them to what had happened there during the war. I saw the rubble around town and heard stories of unexploded cluster bombs lying on the ground. I asked the participants to place their Polaroids in front of the ruins and I photographed the Polaroids amidst the rubble.

This led me to the question: how does place relate to memory? In this region, land has multiple meanings. I wanted to know how the participants view the land in their village. I asked them to make three photographs:

1. my favorite place from childhood
2. my favorite place now
3. a photograph of 1) installed in 2).

When I return in June, I will continue working with this group to create imagery further exploring memory and place in this area.

Postscript

As the sun set one evening, we were still photographing. While we were shooting, a brand new tour bus entered Zibquin. In elegant lettering, it was marked "Lebanon Tours" on the side. A pack of Westerners and Lebanese piled out of the bus and, without asking permission, started wandering around town. They each had a camera and were taking pictures of the destruction to bring with them, for what purpose it was unclear.

The participants of the LOL workshop looked at them with curiosity. What are they doing here? Who are they? They piled back into the van without speaking to anyone in town. The bus sped off. We continued photographing.

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