Torn Folded Curled
showing 'super-private' and other photobookworks
sourced from the Arab Image Foundation
photoworks and installation by paula roush
Makan Project Space, Beirut
Sept- Nov 2015
TITLE WORK: Super-Private
TITLE EXHIBITION: Torn Folded Curled
AUTHOR: paula roush
MEDIUM: photobookwork and installation,
20 inkjet photoprints (wall),
photobook (bed), apartment, bed,
white bed sheet, two pillows, curtains,
rug, night stands, lamp, plants
GALLERY: Makan Project Space, Beirut
DATE: Sept- Nov 2015
Photoprints and photobook works
produced as part of the project
Torn Folded Curled
residency at the Arab Image Foundation
and Plan Bey, Beirut
PHOTOBOOK:
SUPER – PRIVATE (ABRIDGED)
Duotone pigment printed on Epson matt 160gsm
Handbound with post screws
Photographs sourced from the EPS collection
Arab Image Foundation
EXHIBITION
'Torn, folded, curled' is a working term used at the Arab Image Foundation to categorise heavily damaged photographs that require special care in storage and preservation. It is also the title for a project started with photographic research at the Foundation followed by a publishing residency at PlanBEY that resulted in photobookworks and an exhibition at the Makan Project Space.
Based in Beirut’s Mar Mikhael, Makan was a residential apartment before its conversion into a project space. Relying on the domestic feeling of the site, the gallery was retrofitted into a furnished apartment and the photobook works integrated within a site-specific installation. The staging of a narrative within an out-dated domestic interior invited the audience into an intimist reading of the scenes evoked in the printed pages.
This effect is visible with the work 'Super-private,' sourced from the work of an amateur photographer known as RS. Photographing in the early 1950s in Beirut, he left his work in film rolls that remained undeveloped during his lifetime and are shown here as photobookworks for the first time. The ‘real-life’ apartment setting provides the ideal backdrop for a visual script that emerges in the staged scenes for the camera, where his friends and companions feature as characters in a photo-roman noir.
contact
paula roush ::: paularoush@gmail.com
msdm studio ::: msdm@msdm.org.uk