For

For
much of the 20th century, Beirut flaunted an exotic and
hedonistic glamour that drew travellers from the world over. It was
a city that conjured notions of opulence, cosmopolitanism,
architectural splendour and continental style. So alluring was
Beirut that it became affectionately referred to as the “Paris of
the Middle East”.

In more recent times the capital has become scarred by decades
of civil strife, and the push to rebuild and recover from that
destruction has been 30 years in the making. That was until 4
August, when a single, catastrophic explosion left causalities not
only in the form of human life, but in the shells of Beirut’s
treasured buildings, structures and dwellings.

Abandoned Dwellings: Display of Systems is a collection of
photographs that Lebanese photographer, Gregory Buchakjian shot
between 2009 and 2016 as part of a seven-year research project.
Through inhabiting and capturing each location, he was able to
retell the story of each place and its inhabitants: some had been
expelled by wars and conflicts, while others had simply drifted
on.

Stumbling upon lost and forgotten objects, such fragments of a
Palestinian driver’s license, a British Railcard or even a
handwritten diary from 1979 with a manual on the art of regular and
guerrilla warfare tucked inside it, it became clear that, though
these buildings seem tired and dispirited, they were once full of
life and, as such, became a portal to a forgotten and vivacious
past.

Today, Gregory finds himself surrounded by abandoned,
dilapidated and devastated buildings. The effect of the gradual
decay of time, as captured in his photos, has been affected on the
city’s structures in a matter of seconds. Not only have many of the
places Gregory photographed been destroyed, but the neglected
dwellings featured in his collection now seem more structurally
sound than the lifeless buildings faltering in today’s
Beirut.

The old cliché of a picture telling a thousand words is a notion
rendered redundant in light of an explosion that has left both
citizens and onlookers speechless. Gregory’s photos showcase a
version of
Beirut that has now been wiped out. The process of restoring
Lebanon’s capital to its former glory will be a battle hard fought
and won.

Could you tell us about the Abandoned Dwellings
collection?

I had this overwhelming feeling that the city was changing right
in front of me, so I started taking pictures of the buildings,
largely, as an act of preserving what was left. It wasn’t a project
or an initiative; it was just a spontaneous reaction to what was
going on. Over the years, it evolved into something more complex: a
research project that was eventually published as a book in 2018.
In that same year, exhibitions took place at the Sursock Museum in
Beirut and at
the Villa Empain in
Brussels in late 2019.

I should add that the Villa Empain was an abandoned building 20
years ago and the Sursock Museum has been badly damaged in the
explosion on 4 August. It’s strange how all these things are
connected.

In light of the explosion on 4 August, how does it feel knowing
that many of the buildings you photographed have now been
destroyed?

It’s sad to see so many of the abandoned buildings that I
photographed are now beyond repair. I haven’t seen them all yet,
but the ones I have seen are completely ruined. When I documented
the buildings for Abandoned Dwellings, they were already abandoned,
many of them run down and neglected. Yet the scale of the damage
now is even more heartbreaking: thousands of inhabited homes and
buildings in good condition have been destroyed. That is the most
devastating part of it all.

How does it feel knowing that many of the stories that Beirut’s
buildings had to tell have been lost?

What initially drove me to do this project was a desire to
preserve the memory and the history of Beirut. When I speak about
the memory and history of the city, I’m talking about what
historians call the microhistory, the little story, the individual
story: the story of the local schoolteacher renting a house nearer
the school; the bodybuilder who left behind his entire collection
of fitness magazines; the story of the woman having a secret affair
with an American journalist. All these stories, these dreams of
individuals, of families, of ordinary people, they are all so
important to the memory of a city because buildings without
inhabitants are just walls. They’re ghost-towns.

So many of these microhistories are emerging, but on a gigantic
scale. One of my students told me about a friend of hers who’s a
magician. During the explosion, his cards were scattered across the
city. He was so distraught at losing part of his livelihood that a
group of his friends took to the streets trying to recover the lost
cards. It was something very small – the story a magician will not
change anything in the Middle East – but it is one of the
individual histories that gives Beirut its character and its
identity.

How would you describe the abandoned buildings in your
collection compared with the affected buildings in Beirut
today?

Many people have told me that the whole city now looks like my
project and, while that is somewhat flattering, it’s so much more
tragic because when you see the abandoned buildings in my
collection, most of them are actually in better condition than any
of the buildings in Beirut today.

Seeing the walls of the Sursock Museum in Beirut completely
destroyed, a building that had not only been renovated just five
years before, but, ironically, had housed my exhibition on ruined
and dilapidated buildings, is beyond surrealism. It’s tragic.

Lebanon has been working for decades to rebuild after the civil
war that ended in 1990. How does it feel knowing that all that hard
work has now been undone?

It made me think of the myth of Sisyphus, who will spend
eternity pushing a boulder up the hill only to watch it roll back
down after every attempt.

In Beirut, the architects, the historians, the artists, the
conservationists, all these people, in his or her own way, have
been involving themselves in projects and initiatives for years in
an attempt to preserve the city’s history and heritage. Now,
everything has fallen to rubble once more, and we have to start all
over again. In the midst of an economic crisis, it’ll be an uphill
battle. It’s exhausting.

The Abandoned Dwellings collection captures a certain beauty in
destruction. Yet the images we see of the recent explosion are far
from beautiful. As an artist, where would you place that line
between destruction that can, on the one hand, amaze us and, on the
other, horrify us?

That’s a complicated question. After the dreadful 9/11 attack,
the German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, said it was “the
greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos”, and,
unsurprisingly, he was widely criticised for saying so.

Yet it’s true that there is an aesthetic of destruction. So, the
image of 9/11, the image of Hiroshima and the image of the Beirut
explosion possess something that can be beautiful.

The same goes for ruins: when we see the buildings in Beirut now
completely devastated there is something of the sublime – it’s
entirely paradoxical. For example, two days ago, I was in the
library of an ornate Beirut mansion that had lost its roof. It
reminded me of the famous picture taken of Holland House in London
after the Second World War. It’s a photo of a library with all its
shelves filled with books and, surrounded by rubble, stand three
men perusing the shelves and reading the books under a non-existent
roof. On the one hand, it’s completely devastating to see a library
in this condition, but, on the other, the library in ruins teaches
us something.

What do ruins teach us?

Ruins teach us a lesson. They tell us that nothing is permanent,
nothing lasts. We don’t last as human beings and we don’t last as
civilisations. Everything, in the end, will disappear.

What is the significance of buildings to a place in relation to
its heritage, its history and its people?

The buildings are what gives a place its identity; you can
recognise a city almost instantly by its cityscape. The skyline is
often the first view we get of a city. Within those cities, each
neighbourhood has its distinct streets, its unique shops, its
characteristic houses, all of which become the stage for the
inhabitants’ lives.

Buildings are so profoundly important on a local, international,
and individual level, and we must fight hard to protect them.

In light of the recent tragedy, what do your photographs now
mean to you?

It’s very strange to look at those photographs now. The only
thing I know is that if I were to exhibit my photos in the future,
I couldn’t do it in the way that I did before: they don’t have the
same meaning. Those photographs show something that was and is no
longer. In a way, they’re grimly prophetic. In all honesty, I don’t
have enough distance yet from what’s happened to know how quite to
interpret my photos today.

All I can tell you is that the shots I’ve taken in the past few
days are much more spectacular than the ones I took for Abandoned
Dwellings, and that’s down to the sheer magnitude of
destruction.

How different would it be if you were just starting your
collection now?

I couldn’t. I could not start it now. It’s something else,
something completely different. The difference between what’s
happening now and what happened in my project is that now we are
living its life. The buildings I was photographing were not
necessarily damaged: they were in good condition, then they became
abandoned and, as a consequence, they fell to ruin, but they were
still in good structural order. Now, the buildings became
uninhabited because they were ruined – it’s the reverse.

If I were surveying and photographing all the abandoned
buildings in Beirut today, I couldn’t do it alone; I would need an
army of people. It took me nine years to survey 700 abandoned
buildings. Now there are thousands of buildings that have been
shattered in less than 15 seconds.

Wherever there is destruction, there is a need to rebuild. Do
you see a future in which Lebanon is able to recover and to
rebuild?

I can’t think of the future right now; it’s too complicated.
Instead, I just work and keep busy. We cannot think. If we think,
we feel exhausted and overwhelmed and, then, we can’t bring
ourselves to do anything, so we just take each day at a time.

Tell us about the work you’re doing now.

Right now, I’m working at the Sursock Palace, which is one of
the largest historical mansions in Beirut and holds a hugely
impressive collection of artwork. Since the house was very badly
damaged in the explosion, I’ve been working on the inventory for
the paintings in order to see which ones have survived, which are
damaged and in need of urgent restoration, and which are totally
destroyed.