‘There aren’t only cedars in Lebanon
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By Joumana Medlej The Daily Star 3rd March, 2004
The man who takes pictures of trees is back. As promised, Jean-Luc Fournier has returned,
after his initial trip to Lebanon last summer, with the results of his project, called “There Aren’t only Cedars in Lebanon.”
The project is a compilation of 38 stories about trees, told by the people who love them.
The panoramic photographs hang in the French Cultural Center, with accompanying text in French and Arabic. A professor at the Ecole Nationale de la Photographie d’Arles in France, Fournier spent last summer collecting his material from all regions of Lebanon.
Some of the stories are personal, like that of Georges Sfeir’s pine, the place of his first romantic meeting. Some are part of a much larger and tragic story, as is the case with Ali Abdallah’s 800-year-old oak tree in Shebaa, overshadowed by an Israeli radar dish. The saddest stories concern trees no longer there, which only survive in pictures. Some of the trees in the pictures have disappeared or died since they were photographed. Tania Mehanna photographed a magnolia tree that had survived the war because of its proximity to the synagogue in Wadi Bou Jamil. The tree has since been cut down.
Mehanna is a journalist and a member of Tamyras, a publishing house that works to protect the fauna and flora of Lebanon. She replied to Fournier’s appeal for stories about trees last September, and was so moved by “her” tree’s fate that she offered to help Fournier publish the book of the exhibit.
“We felt a sense of urgency,” Mehanna said. “If we (in Lebanon) go on like this,
we will lose our relationship with the tree.”
The book, “Histoires d’Arbres” (Stories of Trees) includes all the exhibit’s photos along with accompanying text, and also presents Fournier’s previous work in France: pictures of a eucalyptus tree growing in his garden around which he invited friends and strangers to pose.
Saro Ajemian, a media student whose picture with his tree made the book’s cover, fell in love with Fournier’s project early on and actively helped the photographer. “It took on a sentimental dimension for me,” he said. “I have to say it’s not everyday you see someone shooting trees …”
Loubna Thini came all the way from Aytit, near Tyre, to attend the opening of the exhibit. She is one of the subjects, photographed with a pine given to her as a little girl. She said she was moved by the event: “This is a wonderful way to show Lebanon to the outside world.”
The exhibit is scheduled to travel around Lebanon, and Fournier would like it to go to Damascus before it features in the Arles month of photography in France, July 2004. He said that the people in France were directly concerned and very interested in the exhibit. They read the images at their primary level, that of the story being told, he said.
“In France I expect they’ll be more concerned with whether it is conceptual or documentary art, the quality of the lighting, that kind of thing …”
Fournier presented the exhibit in person at the French Cultural Center but said this was not the end of the project definitely not: “I am so happy with the way the project turned out that I would love to do a second part!”
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