Earth of Endless Secrets refers to Zaatari’s ongoing research project, unearthing and examining a wide range of documents that testify to the current cultural and political conditions of Lebanon. Zaatari’s artistic practice involves the study and investigation of the way these documents straddle, conflate, or confuse notions of history and memory. By re-contextualizing audiotapes, videos, photographs, journals, personal collections of artifacts, objects, and interviews, Zaatari explores the “dynamics that govern the state of image-making in situations of war,” more precisely in territories subject to military invasions and withdrawals. With an almost archeological eye, he reveals the intimate layers of history contained in records of everyday experience.
Edited by Karl Bassil and Akram Zaatari
Essays by: Rasha Salti, Hannah Feldman, Laura U. Marks, and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie.
Published by: Portikus (Frankfurt), Sfeir Semler Gallery, and Beirut Art Center.
With the generous support of The Prince Claus Fund, Hessische Kultur, and 53 dots.
381 pages. Color. Dimensions: 28 x 24 cm. Hard cover.
Akram Zaatari: Born in 1966 in Saida, Lebanon. Lives and works in Beirut.
Zaatari’s work reflects on the shifting nature of borders and the production and circulation of images in the context of the current political divisions in the Middle East. His videos and photographic installations look into technologies of image production and the notions of surveillance, exploring the way different media apparatuses get employed in the service of power, resistance, and memory.
As co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation, Zaatari is deeply invested in examining how photography served to shape notions of aesthetics, postures and social codes, thereby looking at the present through a wealth of past photographic records from the Middle East. Zaatari has been focusing since 1999 on the archive of Studio Shehrazade in Saida (Lebanon), studying, indexing, and presenting the work of photographer Hashem el Madani (1928 -) as a register of social relationships and of photographic practices.
Former publications by Zaatari include:
Hashem el Madani: Promenades.
(Edited by Karl Bassil and Akram Zaatari. Published by AIF and MTG, Beirut 2006)
Hashem el Madani: Studio Practices.
First edition: (Edited by Lisa LeFeuvre and Akram Zaatari. Published by AIF, MTG, and The Photographers’ Gallery, Beirut 2004)
Second edition: (Edited by Karl Bassil and Akram Zaatari. Published by AIF and MTG, Beirut 2006)
Mapping Sitting: On Portraiture and Photography.
(Edited by Karl Bassil, Zeina Maasri and Akram Zaatari, in collaboration with Walid Raad. Published by AIF and MTG, Beirut 2002)
The Vehicle: Picturing Moments of Transition in a Modernizing Society.
(Edited by Akram Zaatari. Published by AIF and MTG, Beirut 1999)
Portraits du Caire.
(Edited by Akram Zaatari. Published by Actes Sud, 1998)
