Back to Beirut, Ritorni a Beirut

Returning to Beirut by Gabriele Basilico, in the words of the curator Giovanna Calvenzi is the book that "should be [...] "definitive" to remember a deep and passionate relationship that has linked Gabriele Basilico to the city of Beirut, which over the years has also become one of the central cornerstones of his commitment to photography. In addition to a long work in the archive of re-reading of all that Basilico has achieved, "accomplices" of the various journeys have also been invited to exercise their memories. The wide selection of black and white and colour photographs is introduced by texts by Gabriele Basilico, Giovanna Calvenzi, Tanino Musso, Fouad Elkoury, Gabriel Bauret, Christian Caujolle, Alessandro Ferrario, Rita Capezzuto and a Chronology by Farian Sabahi. Thus, page after page, we discover the work carried out by Gabriele Basilico on the occasion of four photographic missions to Beirut in 1991, 2003, 2008 and 2011. In 1991 he was involved by the Hariri Foundation and the Lebanese writer Dominique Eddé in a project that aimed at the photographic documentation of the central area of the city of Beirut at the end of the devastating Civil war that had torn the city apart for fifteen years. With him are called five other photographers: Raymond Depardon, Josef Koudelka, Robert Frank, René Burri and Fouad Elkoury.