open Democracy News Analysis - Mai Ghoussoub: forever alive, Mai Ghoussoub - Comments

johannabartley on "Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award"

johannabartley — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:48:01 +0100

I have seen a similar picture in a commercial for discount auto parts and the first thing that went trough my head was: how can they promote vanity over pain? What happened there? And how come these girls were there?

BB™ on "Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award"

BB™ — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:22:22 +0000

Rick HAUSER Founding Partner, Beyond Broadcast™ Co-Founder, THE PERFORMANCE LAB™ In the sense that the photographer observes (only), I find the remarks about the picture interesting and the equation invited with Helmut Newton and voyeurism provocative. Yet the "capturing" of the moment is meaningless to me; "being there" is not enough of a motivation. Surely we don't mean that the apparent banality of the subject matter and the accident of its recording "elevates" it to the level of art? Truly fine war photography captures/has captured moments of universal — anguish — hope — iconographically. This picture is little more than a snapshot — little choice other than to snap the shutter has been made . . . And — in that — all the meaning, I wager someone will say . . .

pdebeer on "Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award"

pdebeer — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:54:18 +0100

What is wrong with this picture and with Mai Ghoussoub's views about Beirut? This picture shows us a slice of Beirut as it is and not as some politically correct minds - from Hizbullah to ... - would like Lebanon to be seen. Yes, thanks God or nature, there are beautiful women in Beirut, whose house as been destroyed or not. And there are also a lot of bright women, obviously more than bright men, otherwise Lebanon would not be in the present state of affairs. And, among these bright women is also Nadine Labaki, whose movie, Caramel, has just been released in Paris. It shows life in Beirut through four women who meet to gossip in the most unexpected of peace havens, a beauty parlour where religion, social origin disappear behind layers of cucumber slices and beauty creams. Whenever there are bright and brave women, there is still hope.

Unknown2007 on "Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award"

Unknown2007 — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 11:05:51 +0100

... thinking about what you've written some more, I guess what it comes down to is something like the 'orientalism' you mention (ie exposing the prejudices in the audience, not necessarily capturing any other 'truth' about the situation) - but since the people in the photgraph have commented on it, it's worth letting their voices be heard too. And if you live in Beirut, of course you'll know the Isrealis bombed the rich too. My apologies!

Unknown2007 on "Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award"

Unknown2007 — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:52:06 +0100

The people in the car were inspecting the damage to their house - they weren't being disaster tourists at all. More at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6385969.stm (8 March 2007). Another example of prejudice overriding reality. Do you think the Israelis only bombed poor people?

ausredenmensch on "Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award"

ausredenmensch — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:05:14 +0000

This article is typical of Mai: willing to re-think things, generous-spirited, empathic, ready to give credit to other artists and not rush to judgement or to condemn. I wish more people could think and feel as Mai's extraordinary life taught her to think and feel. But as soon as I write that, I realise Mai would never have wanted more people to be like her, since she believed in variety and diversity above everything. I am probably just saying I wish from the bottom of my heart that she were not dead. If you look at her life and her struggle to become an artist and fight for freedom of expression, to cross cultures, bringing what she learned from one life to enrich the next, to publish books she believed in, many of which, like my own The White Family, might never otherwise have seen the light of day, you see that Mai Ghoussoub was an emblematic figure for Open Democracy. This space carries forward the freedoms she believed in, and her friends will be grateful that you mourn her today.

David Page on "Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award"

David Page — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 23:38:11 +0000

Michael Bix does not seem to understand that Mai Ghoussoub is"us" - she is from Beruit, it is her city, hence her reaction is sympathetic not harsh (see her account of going there after the war).

michaelbix on "Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award"

michaelbix — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:19:37 +0000

Unfortunately, without projecting greatly, I don't believe we know enough to make the judgements suggested by Mai Ghoussoub. We do not know the neighbourhood. Perhaps the woman with the greatly pained expresson (and phone camera) is directly in front of her own family's home... seeing the wreckage, everyone smelling a broken gas main or the remains of the family dog. Perhaps it is the ruins of her uncle's business. We don't know. If this had been Montr�al or Boston and our car were a relatively recent model Toyota or Ford (and we were dressed in clean, if not necessarily stylish, clothing), perhaps the suggestion of voyeur would instantly spring to mind. But I suspect that is a bit harsh and premature. These are people in the middle of a modern city - a modern city torn from its normal routine by unexpected bombs from the sky. Think about it. How would it feel to us. How would we react? How would we appear if this had been us?

Mai Ghoussoub: forever alive, Mai Ghoussoub

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:40:00 +0000

World Press Photo of the Year 2006
©Spencer Platt, USA, Getty Images | Reprinted by kind permission, World Press Photo
Young Lebanese drive through devastated neighborhood of South Beirut, 15 August

I am certain that Spencer Platt's picture which won the World Press Photo prize for 2006 looked disturbing and even repellent to most viewers at first glance. I admit that it bothered me when I first saw it on my screen. But I also admit that I kept on looking at it. What was it that intrigued me in this picture despite my unexplained revulsion? Why did I feel that I had to write about what I saw in the picture?

It started with the reactions of others.

I received the photo by email from a young Lebanese woman who commented: a prize for an American photo of Lebanon! I guess it meant that there was something wrong, even some plot, behind the photo and the prize.

My colleague, who heard me say "good Lord" to my computer, came closer, had a quick look and said without a second's hesitation: this reminds me of Rebel Without a Cause. You do remember this cult movie, starring the young and beautiful James Dean? The red convertible car must have inspired his remark, along with the glamorous youth taking a ride inside it.

I said to myself, there is something bizarre in my colleague's remark, for it is not enough to see a fancy car and a few pretty faces to recall James Dean and Hollywood's cults. But after a pause, I realised that his reaction was not shallow: for, think cars, beautiful young people and ... think also of death, and you have a good reason to remember James Dean and his rebellion.

That same afternoon, I went to a housewarming party and I overheard two young Lebanese arguing about the same photo. Both were in their 20s and very "cosmopolitan". One said: I think this is a great photograph, it shows us as we are, not people associated only with war and destruction. The second one was appalled and said: this is the "new orientalism" - instead of the women depicted in Delacroix's classic orientalist paintings, today we have these modern, model-type Lebanese women against a background of war and poverty.

Mai Ghoussoub is an artist, writer and publisher. She was born and brought up in Beirut, and has lived in London since 1979. She has written numerous articles on culture, aesthetics and middle-eastern issues for international journals. She is the author of Leaving Beirut: Women and the Wars Within (Saqi, 2001), co-editor (with Emma Sinclair-Webb) of Imagined Masculinities: Male Identity and Culture in the Modern Middle East (Saqi, 2006), and a contributor to Anna Wilson, ed., Lebanon, Lebanon (Saqi, 2006)

Also by Mai Ghoussoub in openDemocracy:

"Abu Ghraib: I do not know where to look for hope" (10 May 2004)

"Who is serious?"
(9 June 2004)

"Lebanon: slices of life" (31 October 2006)

Inside the image and ourselves

The photo won the award on 9 February 2007 because, according to the jury, it shows Lebanon's contradictions. World Press Photo jury chair Michele McNally describes the winning image: "It's a picture you can keep looking at. It has the complexity and contradiction of real life, amidst chaos. This photograph makes you look beyond the obvious."

This is fair enough. The photo does show the contradictions of a country where destruction and the love of fun are unbearably juxtaposed, or mixed together to the point of exhaustion. The background is brown and grey, as it is in reality. Like a devastating tragedy of rubble mixed with the colours of lost interiors. The car is sparkling red, and the white T-shirt of the blonde woman in the car or the handkerchief covering the nose of the woman in the sleeveless black dress are whiter then the shirt of a passer-by going about his daily routine; the passer-by too, as well as the woman wearing a headscarf, are living in this destroyed neighbourhood. The driver of the convertible car looks like a pop singer or a character from a recent Star Academy TV show. If the photographer had wanted to invent such contradictions, he would not have done better.

Still, if I had been a member of the jury, this is not the justification I would have given for the well-deserved prize. I believe that the photo is stunning in the metaphor it creates about war photography. It tells us about the voyeurism of the photographer, of the act of taking photos in tragic situations: if there is a contradiction, it is in the encounter between art, beauty and tragedy. Covering a disaster in order to create a striking image is what Robert Capa did best, he became an icon for it and we, the viewers are becoming addicted to this art form.

Here is an image, a mirror of the self, an inverted gaze shot impulsively or in "cold blood" by the photographer/artist. The act of taking a picture by the photographer Spencer Platt is mirrored and seen through the woman whose face is strained and body tilted while taking a picture of the same devastation from the seat of the red car. Did the photographer question his own behaviour by showing the voyeurism of another person, a non-professional? Is he saying that the voyeur's need to witness human misery and affliction, and to let others see it through their eyes, is in all of us?

Maybe, the obvious reference to voyeurism is what triggered my first reaction, my rejection of a testimony that was offered to me before I had the time to really look at it. Somehow, somewhere, the images of Helmut Newton came to my mind - despite the fact that there is nothing erotic or pornographic in Platt's picture. Now I can see where I went wrong and got confused, how I needed to focus better to seize the allusion to voyeurism and the art of the camera that Newton shares with war photographers as they create images for the press.

Looking closely, the photo has nothing lurid in it: it is when art has to face human suffering and does not isolate tragedy from the ironies of survival that the absurdity of being hits us in the face.

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