On Photography, Dispossession and Times of Struggle

Photographs are descriptive records of a specific time and place. They have an indexical referential quality and are often used as evidence. Lebanese artist and filmmaker Akram Zaatari explores photographs' ties to war and to causes in general and wonders what happens when photographs vanish. In this film, which contains interviews with people who lost their photos because of war, Zaatari reflects on the elasticity of what we see as photography. He shows photos from nearly a century ago in the digital frames of iPads and iPhones, stacking frame upon frame and image upon image. In the process, he creates an abstract, complex but also insightful network of long-forgotten conflicts, the photos that were taken of them, and the sense of loss that's attached to them.