AL-'AN ! الآن2016-2018
35mm - Black&White Gelatin silver prints + gatefold vinyl & CD Shot in Beirut and Lebanon between 2016 and 2018, AL-'AN ! (meaning Now! in Arabic) is an analogue B&W photography series coming along with the last Mediterranean travel undertaken by the musical collective Oiseaux-Tempête. After Istanbul (with the album Ütopiya?, 2015) and Greece (S/T, 2013), the band landed to Beirut - in the very heart of the "storm zone". With 17 different communities, its common frontiers with Syria and Israel, streams of Palestinian and Syrian refugees, the stigmata from a 15 year civil war still very much in the air, the recent garbage crisis bringing environmental problems for all the area, this enclave that opens onto the sea appears to be a concentrated amalgamation of all the political challenges that are faced by the Middle-East. During few months, photographer Frédéric D. Oberland (and also cofounder of Oiseaux-Tempête) shot people, streets, landscapes, protests and various situations he met. As a seismograph he measures, aware to the heartbeat. The feeling of tension and confinement is mirrored in the open spaces of the night beneath a blanket of stars. "AL-'AN ! embraces in this "Now!" the living and the dead, the world and us, the misery and the bliss of being. Here and now." (Alexandre François) Extracts published on 'AL-'AN ! الآن (And your night is your shadow — a fairy-tale piece of land to make our dreams)' by OISEAUX-TEMPÊTE as a deluxe LP with gatefold sleeve 350gsm & printed inserts and digipack CD >> ORDER VINYL / CD |
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