the black snapper

Wednesday July 12, 2006, Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers in an operation that sparked a series of attacks on Lebanon’s infrastructure, civilians’ houses and natural environment. The offensive lasted for 34 days, during which I was working as the photo editor for an international news agency in its Beirut office; I only saw the conflict through the images that I edited of other photographers. The country was packed with local and international media that transmitted their stories for few weeks after the cease-fire until the world lost interest in Lebanon’s news, and the citizens, whose lives had changed forever, were forgotten. I quit my job by the end of 2006.

Summer 2007, I visited the damaged area in the south of Lebanon for the first time since the beginning of the war, almost a year later, wanting to see what had happened. I entered houses and mosques destroyed by the war; in few seconds the war had turned public what was once private. The furniture left behind witnessed of thousands of stories and memories of people who once lived there.

In my Abandoned Spaces I aimed at documenting the peace I found in every house or mosque I entered even amongst the chaos. I wanted to shoot the space and give it back its dignity. The Abandoned Spaces series is the first photography project I did after the summer war, it was my way of reconciling with photography.