Nour Sulaiman

Big Bang Beirut

Big Bang Beirut shows the aftermath of the Beirut port explosion which took place on August 4, 2020 in Lebanon. The Beirut blast traumatised and exhausted the local population, leaving 300,000 individuals displaced or completely homeless. This also had deep repercussions for the Lebanese community and to those who are connected with Beirut as a space.

These photomontages represent Beirut in a post-crisis moment, using selected images of the shocked, disturbed and outraged people alongside the broken buildings and different landscape shots. Another important theme is the variation between the “here” and the “there”. I am depicting the distance and disparity between the internal and direct experience by the locals of the Beirut port explosion on the one hand, and the external and indirect experience by the global community at large, who continue to enjoy their everyday lives from afar.