Finalists 2022, Fouad Elkoury

“Fouad Elkoury studied architecture in London before choosing photography. This background has undoubtedly shaped his vision and his way of interacting with reality which he recreates in atmospheres, often by overlapping or interweaving planes.”

Fouad Elkoury studied architecture in London before choosing photography. This background has undoubtedly shaped his vision and his way of interacting with reality which he recreates in atmospheres, often by overlapping or interweaving planes.

“Photography is about creating mysteries and imaginary worlds,” he explains, leaving it up to the viewer to interpret and create their own vision of the world. Inevitably associated with Lebanon, which he has photographed extensively over several decades, his work is organised into various series. Notably Civil War (1977-1984), a seminal work on the daily life of the Lebanese during the war, which he brought together under this title a posteriori.

Although the human figure is at first omnipresent, it becomes rarer over the years, to the benefit of the landscape and the architecture, for example, when he shows the ravages of war in Beirut City Centre (1991), a collective commission on the city, or in Traces of War (1994-1997). Although Lebanon occupies an important place in his career, his work is not limited to this body of work on his country of origin, as shown by the series produced in Egypt in the footsteps of Gustave Flaubert and Maxime du Camp in the late 1980s.

At the dawn of the 2000s, as the crisis in photojournalism intensified and press commissions became rarer, Fouad Elkoury took a change of direction, moving from the world of reportage to that of art. His practice has become multidisciplinary over the years and includes photography, video and writing. But whatever the means of expression, the emotion is always there.

Sophie Bernard

Show Biography

Born in Paris, France, in 1952. 

After graduating in architecture in 1979 in London, Fouad Elkoury turned to photography and his first reportage was on everyday life in war-torn Lebanon. In 1984, he published his first book Beirut Aller-Retour. 

In 1989, after joining the Rapho agency, Elkhoury spent several months in Egypt following in the footsteps of Flaubert and Maxime du Camp. In 1991, he participated with other photographers in a photographic mission to the devastated city of Beirut, which resulted in the publication of Beirut Centre Ville and an exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 1993.

In 1997, he created the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut. 

Following the war between Israel and Lebanon in the summer of 2006, he produced De la guerre et de l’amour, a work of 33 paintings blending photography and writing. 

In 2009, together with three other photographers, he started a photographic mission for ‘Solidere’ on the new centre of Beirut – Lebanese Company for the Development and Reconstruction of Beirut Central District. 

Between 2015 and 2020, he wrote two books, Letters to my Son, a series of emails each with a text and an image, and Passing Time, an anthology of his images of Lebanon, a book created with Manal Khader and Gregory Buchakjian. 

In 2018 he founded the Mina Image Center, the first museum of photography in the Middle East. Fouad Elkhoury has exhibited in several cities around the world including Paris, Moscow, London, Cairo, Dubai, Buenos Aires, Beirut and Rome.

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SITE :
www.fouadelkoury.com