Latent Images: Diary of a Photographer

Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
Joana Hadjithomas Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1969.
She lives and works in Beirut.
Khalil Joreige Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1969.
He lives and works in Beirut.

The combined practice of Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, which is primarily based on photography and film, highlights the quality of their chosen media to capture and chronicle time and transition. Because they were politicized at an early age, however, they thoughtfully question the role of the image in relation to memory and history. Through their work, this creative pair challenges the power and meaning of the image by engaging the parameters of image production and its narratives, especially under the conditions of war. Focusing on the history of their home country, Lebanon, they employ both fictitious characters and lesser-known strands of history to construct the setting of their work. Like archeologists, they excavate layers of imaginaries of their war-ravaged country by delving into the depths of a social memory marked by collective amnesia and the search for a personal history of belonging.
For the 56th Biennale di Venezia, the artists have conceived of a live event relating an object, moving image, and performance taking place continuously throughout the course of the exhibition. Latent Images / Diary of a photographer consists of daily readings by several performers of the artist book that Hadjithomas and Joreige have published. The 1,312 page book documents hundreds of rolls of film that were exposed but never developed by the Lebanese postcard photographer Abdallah Farah. Thus, no images are visible. Instead, for each image taken there is a brief written description. During the Lebanese civil war (1975–1991), Farah had stopped developing his film, lacking both means and material, and did not bother to show his images after the war. Instead, he kept a diary in which he meticulously noted each photograph taken, thereby building an imaginary chronicle of the political changes in Lebanon. Through the purported notes of the character of Abdallah Farah, one is able to follow political, social, as well as personal events in postwar Beirut over a period spanning almost a decade (1997–2006). This evocation of the past, produced by the latent images translated into an oral archaeology of events, takes place in one’s imagination only.