Asnam

In 2009, Georges Salameh carried out his first photographic documentation and collection of the presence of religious statues in certain Christian Lebanese regions. Two decades after he left the country and the end of the civil war, large statues of Christ, the Virgin Mary, saints and angels have begun to appear for the first time in the urban landscape outside their usual religious sanctuaries. In the book ASNAM, the gradual acceleration of the monumentalization of faith in public space in Lebanon is a central question. The book looks at the origins of how the representation of faith and its implications in the public sphere are interconnected to political and social issues. It's also a meditation on a confrontation between the sacred and the profane, on the rupture between private and public space, citizen and foreigner and on statues re-appropriation by political and religious interests.