Walid Joumblatt

Lebanese photographer and videomaker Ziad Antar explores the social, urban and economic realities of the Middle East. For the series Expired he used black-and-white film decades beyond its 1976 expiry date and a Kodak Reflex dating from 1948. The stain-like marks and the blurring of contours testify to his interest in the genesis of the photographic image. Evoking old photographs, these pictures record the breakneck modernisation of Lebanon, a country symbolised by both the never completed Murr Tower, used as a rocket-firing position during the civil war, and the portrait of Druze political leader Walid Jumblat.