Traffic zips past Beit Beirut, a recently opened exhibit space and memorial to Lebanon's civil war. The former apartment building sits at the Sodeco crossing, an area once considered too dangerous to risk passage even during ceasefires
The following is from “Imagine: Reflections on Peace,” a new book, as well as an exhibition and series of short films, from The VII Foundation that features photographic essays from societies that have suffered searing conflicts — and survived. Photojournalists and writers reflect on the search for peace, as well as the complexities of rebuilding, in conflict zones from around the world: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Colombia, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda. 2010 Nieman Fellow Gary Knight, a photojournalist and co-founder of the VII photo agency, provided the concept and editorial direction for the book.
In this excerpt, photojournalist Nichole Sobecki writes about her experience returning to Lebanon, where she began her career covering the war. This article was written and the photographs were taken before the August 2020 explosion — caused by improperly-stored ammonium nitrate in a warehouse in the city’s port — that killed at least 200 people and left an estimated 300,000 homeless.
Lebanon is where I came into being as a journalist. As an intern at The Daily Star—the Arab world’s storied English language rag—I published my first photographs. I even wrote the horoscopes briefly, confounding my friends with the specificity of their fortunes. In 2007 I saw war for the first time, as a battle broke out in the northern Palestinian camp of Nahr al-Bared. Fighting between the Islamic militant organization Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese army began the morning of my 21st birthday. Though violence in Syria and other areas of the Middle East has since overshadowed the destruction of Nahr al-Bared, it was the most severe internal fighting Lebanon had seen since the civil war.
In 2017 I returned to Lebanon with writer Robin Wright to try to make sense of what peace means in a place so defined by conflict. As we met with former fighters and young creatives, I thought back to one of Aesop’s fables, “The Oak and the Reed,” and the countless storms this country has weathered without breaking. Peace here comes in shades of gray. It’s the reason to bend with the next wind, to endure, and to embrace the present despite the fire under the ashes.
One of the byproducts of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war was Hezbollah, which emerged after Israel’s 1982 invasion and remains the last militia in Lebanon with arms. Hezbollah runs special cemeteries— some with their own Facebook pages—for its fighters, including several in Beirut’s predominantly Shiite suburb of Dahiye.
Beit Beirut recently opened as an exhibition space and memorial to the civil war. During renovations, Mona El-Hallak, an architect and heritage preservation activist, discovered 11,000 photographic negatives—most of them portraits dating from the 1950s to the 1970s—in a photography studio on the ground floor. Visitors are invited to take away a photo print and try to trace the person in the portrait.
Kids play foosball in a small shop in the Shatila refugee camp, still synonymous with the 1982 massacre of hundreds of mostly Palestinian people in the camp and the adjacent neighborhood of Sabra.
“Hamza” Akel Hamieh with his grandson and namesake. Hamieh became a legend in the Middle East after hijacking six planes between 1979 and 1982, to draw the world’s attention to the kidnapping of Musa Sadr, his religious leader. When asked about whether he worries about another war in Lebanon, Hamza Akel Hamieh replied with a simple “For sure.” “The warlords who caused such chaos and death in this country, now they run the country and they kicked out the ones who killed for them,” he explained. “As long as they are in power, Lebanon is in danger.”
Revelers enjoy ‘80s night at B 018—one of Beirut’s most legendary clubs—built at Karantina. In 1976 a Christian militia attacked and evicted the Palestinian refugee population, killing 1,500, in what became known as the Karantina massacre.
Mahmoud Sabha, 15, a Syrian refugee, releases a pigeon from its coop. Thousands of Syrian refugees live in informal tent camps in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.