The 32 photos in the Real Visions exhibit were originally displayed at the Beirut French Cultural Center in 1999 in a 1 x 1 meter format.

REAL VISIONS

The city leaves its mark on people's memory by giving them a certain "image" to more or less important or even intimate moments of their life. As important can become some day the human power over the identity of a city.

For those who live in or near a given city, the place gains a certain "personnality" and even a certain "soul".

In extreme circumstances like war or at the time of large scale building
projects, men play with the image of the city, contribute in the modification of its "personnality" and even in the reincarnation of its "soul".
That has become the case of Beirut at the end of the 20th century when
the central district, after being the prey of multiple whims of human
violence, becomes the world's largest construction site.

Thus, it is the finest representation of two extreme examples of man's
power over the city, because these two extremes are juxtaposed there
today. The outcome is a vision that borders on the absurd, at the limits of the
imaginable, but real.

Absurd fruit of fate...

The face of man is excluded from these images because they only represent the ambiguity of his immense power.
These are the remains of a disastrous war, those of a total chaos still
lingering in a reorganized environment which is aiming to "tame" them.

Greta Torossian
Beirut, may 1999

LE PATRIMOINE EPHEMERE

Greta Torossian has invented the notion of fleeting heritage. These views, quite real when the camera captures them, metamorphose before our eyes. Tomorrow, the historian of the third millennium will be pleased to study Beirut's 1999 landscape before more futuristic buildings soar into the sky and more ruined buildings collapse...
A philosopher's reflection rests behind the artist's statement, taking the measure of human ambivalence toward the cities we destroy and rebuild, even as we fail to draw the necessary lessons from that process.
This new theme appears in a particularly original body of work that has kept its promises since 1996.

Hervé Le Goff
Photography historian and critic
Former member of the jury of the Mois de la Photo In Lebanon