Beirut Blues

“I never walked as much around the city and its downtown. The clouds weren’t the only thing disappearing from the car’s window… I am not looking for providing any evidence. I just want to show theses places in front of which I stopped for a longtime, day after day, standing, with my eyes looking up or straight before they disappear. “

Greta Naufal, Beirut 1996, BEY 017/GS4 96

“[…] During and following the endlessly long years of war in Lebanon, Greta Naufal’s dedication was to documenting the depredations suffered by the civil population and the destruction of their living milieu. The shocking devastation targeted upon war-torn Beirut is fixed forever in her depictions of the heartbreaking delicacy of its distinctive architecture reduced to ruinous rubble, now in the post-war period discarded as land fill. Greta Naufal follows the fate of the exquisitely carved yellow stone blocks, painting them in their new marine environment, dumped unceremoniously into the harbor.

William Wareing, Millesgarden Museum, Stockholm 2002