BEIRUT highs and lows
Views of central Beirut is a selection of images from the documentation which i was commissioned to do between 2008 and 2011 by Solidere, the company in charge of the planning and redevelopment of Beirut central district. The central zone of the capital became heavily damaged during a civil war that lasted for more than fifteen years. The damage caused was either total structural collapse, partial collapse or at best, a full outer damage from bullets and shrapnel. My commission started in a later stage of the rebuilding when all destruction signs has been restored or flattened down. Although a big part of the buildings were saved and restored, large parts of the city was re-designed in modern architectural setups and some key historical locations and buildings were replicated like the past, to preserve some of the authenticity of Beirut's rich historical memory. The photography work of Gabriele Basilico which was published in the book ("BEIRUT 1991-2003" Baldini Castoldi Dalai Editore Inc) is a fascinating historical record of what the city center has suffered after long years of heavy and light armed continuous conflicts. Commissioned by Solidere in the early 1990s, Gabriele Basilico with Fouad El-Khoury, Raymond Depardon, René Burri, Josef Koudelka and Robert Frank were part of a collective photographic project of capturing an ultimate image of Beirut's city center ruins before the initial clear-out and rebuilding process began.