Love In Times of Revolution

I did this interview with a Sfeir last year sometime, a few months following the Beirut explosion. I wrote it for school, but due to Covid, and life in general, never finished it and never published it. I always felt bad, because he was a lovely guy, so anyway, here is what I have, I guess. It was really interesting looking into the deep corruption of the Beirut government, and the impact it had on the population following the explosion. Blogspot won't let me add photos right now, but here is a link to the two worksI am talking about.

 

Love in Times of Revolution 

Omar Sfeir, soft-spoken and poetic, a human being searching for beauty in a world constantly enclosing around him. A Lebanese photographer and filmmaker, he defies the barriers built for him by society, and finds beauty where it seems most distant.

Sfeir describes it as ‘suffocating’; the constant burden of economic crisis, a pandemic, the explosion, burning orange smoke, ammonium nitrate.

 

How would you describe your art?

My art, and in this case my photography, is finding poetry in reality and reality in poetry, as a reaction to injustice, oppression and violence. I aim to find glimpses of poetry… magic in moments of real life or provoke a reality to see life in a more lyrical way.

 

What themes are you trying to portray through your photography?

The main themes of my pictures are love, gender, sexuality and the complexity of human relationships, particularly in forms that are prohibited by the Lebanese society… We have a lot of obstacles here in Lebanon, so my art is definitely in one way or another, defying the system, defying everything that is standing in our way.

 

How did the explosion influence your recent photos?

When the explosion happened, we looked at the sky of Beirut and it was covered by hazy orangey cloud, which has a beautiful colour and it looks like the smokes that are available in these big flamboyant parties. But sadly, the smoke was a reaction to the ammonium nitrate, which was the substance that triggered the explosion. So, this orange hue that’s supposed to be beautiful and warm, because it reminds us of the sunset, it’s a warm colour, took a different connotation and it became scary. It became suffocating.

 

Do you mean suffocating in the literal sense, or is there something deeper happening in Lebanese society?

I say suffocating… it’s not just by the substance, but the Lebanese people weren’t doing well even before the explosion, they were already not being able to breathe because of being overloaded with the pandemic and an economic crisis and then on top of it there was the explosion.

So, I wanted to show a political leader smoking shisha… and the tube of the shisha is white and red. The white and red resembles the smoke… I don’t know you call it in English, in Arabic it’s called the houn alzouk. Which is a big tube that is polluting the entire city from the smoke that’s going out of it. So, I wanted it to be like that as a symbol… and the political leader to be exhaling the shisha smoke, but at the same time this time it’s orange. And it’s covering the people.

We have a power plant in Zouk Mosbeh which is an area in Lebanon next to the beach, that has these kinds of tubes, they pollute the whole city, so I wanted also to give it as a symbolic element that reminds us also of the corruption that happens on a daily basis, not necessarily only after the explosion.

 

You mentioned the theme of love being key in your photography, why is queer representation so important to you?

Regarding my queer advocacy, and the way I defend and I represent queer people in my art work, definitely I stand for the marginalised communities in general and people who feel alienated from what is considered right in our society.

I wanted to include queer pioneers and diverse religions… pictures represent a certain national situation because diversity is very important thing for me. I advocate for this diversity. I believe in its existence. I believe in its beauty. This time when the blast happened nobody asked if the person is Muslim or Christian, if the person is straight or gay, if the person is a woman or a man, they were all trying their best to live and they were all fearing death. And they were all treated the same, equally.

 

Do you think this explosion showed a growing acceptance of queer people in Lebanon?

Unfortunately, in Lebanon queer acceptance is not something that’s very present, it's getting better but still there is so much conservatism and a lot of bullying and homophobia. What I meant after the blast is not that everybody was helped equally, because that happens only in an ideal world. Even after the blast, the marginalised was also marginalised as a way of receiving support, but there were so many NGOs and personal initiatives who are supportive of the cause that stood by the side of these marginalised individuals and what I meant by the photograph is that at this time when the blast happened and everybody was in danger, it didn’t matter who you are, and where you come from. We were all of us, put at risk, regardless of our religion, sexual orientation or whatsoever. So, I was talking specifically about the risk, the risk was something that touched everybody equally.