The Lebanese photographer Jack Dabaghian was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1961 1 . His father was also passionate about photography, practicing it on an amateur level. Some of Jack’s earliest...
Written by
LIAM SIBAI
The Lebanese photographer Jack Dabaghian was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1961 1 . His father was also passionate about photography, practicing it on an amateur level. Some of Jack’s earliest memories are of his father developing photographs in a dark room 2 . By his late teens, Jack himself had become an amateur photographer, taking pictures of generic scenery such as landscapes of bridges, much like his father.
When Jack was 17, his father died of a stress-induced brain tumor, after the Lebanese civil war had claimed the two branches of the family business. One of the Dabaghians’ sites for manufacturing cooling units was destroyed during the Karantina Massacre of 1976, and the other during the siege of the Tal El-Zaatar that same year. This would not be the last time the civil war would impact Jack’s life.
In 1983, the American embassy in Beirut was bombed. It was located near the American University of Beirut, where Jack was studying Business Administration. Jack rushed to the scene, taking as many pictures as he could. As Jack was leaving, he was approached by a man asking if he wanted to sell his photos. That man was Claude Sarhani, head of United Press International in Beirut. Jack accepted, and by the next day, his photos had made the cover of the New York Times.
Claude took Jack under his wing, and started teaching him the basics of photojournalism:from framing, writing proper captions, to darkroom techniques specific to the press. By age 22, Claude had made Jack Bureau Chief, after which Jack left his education. The young photographer went on to cover the Iran-Iraq war and the Libyan Prisoner exchange. However, he continued to work as a field photographer in Lebanon. In 1985, Jack was abducted by a militant group in Beirut. They stole his camera and his car, and interrogated him for a few hours, before abandoning him on the side of the road.
After this horrific event, Claude helped Jack get a job with Reuters in Paris, as a sports photographer, to escape the dangers of the region. It was a domain that required high technical precision. Jack commented on the contrast with his previous profession saying,
“Photographing wars is the easiest thing you can do in your life; it's like trying to shoot an elephant in a tight corridor”.
Jack would go on to work for Reuters, Paris, as a sports photographer for 18 years. In 2005, he moved to Dubai after becoming head of the Reuter’s Middle East photography department, while also taking occasional photojournalism jobs in the SWANA region. One such job was covering the 2006 war with Israel in Lebanon. Jack was overwhelmed by the pictures of dismembered bodies, and destruction. He was diagnosed with PTSD, and consequently ended his journalism career based on his doctor’s recommendations. In response, he returned to Dubai and opened a photography firm that dealt with branding, sports, and commercials. He ran this firm for almost a decade, taking on important international clients such as Getty Images.
In 2013, artist Katya Traboulsi invited Jack to participate in an exhibition she was curating, titled Generation War. The exhibition showed the photographs of photojournalists from the civil war period and asked them to talk about their experiences the moment they took the photographs that were being displayed 3 . In participating in this exhibition, Jack found himself in a new world, a world of beauty. Suddenly, his photographs did not signal violence and bloodshed, but art. A realization dawned on him, particularly when he saw the acceptance and recognition of his photojournalist friends, such as Patrik Baz, Roger Moukarzel, and Fouad El Khoury, in the art world. This inspired Jack to desire a similar level of acclaim.
While still working in commercial photography to make ends meet, Jack began his artistic journey. In 2014, he produced portraits of members of different African people whose tribal identity is discernible by their traditional clothing. This anthropological dimension to his work would continue in his next project, Druze. Druze involved living not merely amongst the Druze sect, but among their clerical class, the sheikhs. This class, and the scripture they are famously secretive about 4, were at first skeptical of Jack’s project. As he got to know the Sheikhs as well as Nora Jumblatt, wife of former Lebanese Minister Walid Jumblatt, they began to warm up to the veteran photographer.
The veteran’s inspiration for the anthropological project began with the works of the French anthropological photographers of the 19th century, like Felix Bonfisse and Francis Frith. These photographers took pictures of people all over the Middle East. Their work on the Druze, however, was quite limited, due to the famous aforementioned secrecy of the group. Jack wanted to fill this gap in the archive of the French photographers. He said to the sheikhs,
“I want to photograph you the way you weren't photographed in the 1860s”
The Druze project was based on this central approach, that dictated its technical and formal aspects. Technically, the photographs were captured using the collodion process, a distinctively 19th -century photographic medium. Formally, the approach is retro 5 . Retro refers to an artistic method where the creation emulates the technical and formal styles of earlier art. This approach is reflective of a broader artistic trend, where modern works deliberately echo the technical and stylistic elements of earlier periods, a phenomenon insightfully analyzed by the writer and music critic, Mark Fisher 6.
Jack continued to use this retro manner of producing art in Sentinels, a series of portraits of the Lebanese landscape and natural topography, most notably the cedar tree. Cedar, 2021, a photograph that is part of the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation (DAF), portrays a dense grove of majestic cedar trees, their outlines etched sharply against a backdrop that seems to dissolve into the ethereal mists. The cedar, indigenous to Mount Lebanon 7 , is very much a symbol of the old Lebanon of the 19th and early 20th century, where Mount Lebanon was the cultural center and identity of that nation 8 . The subject matter of this image emphasizes the project's thematic, formal, and technical preoccupation with the past. The collodion process used to create this image contributes significantly to its vintage appearance. Its aesthetic embodies the very essence of the retro style, offering a visual experience that is both historic and immediate, connecting the viewer with the photographic traditions of the past.
Sentinels, however, did not only tackle the cedar as a forlorn symbol of Lebanese identity but also as a natural texture. Jack did something similar in Iceland, where he took several digitally rendered helicopter shots of ice glaciers melting into the ocean due to climate change. Much like many of the pieces of Sentinels, you see the swaying and meandering of natural bodies and their texture, be they trees or glaciers, whether in Europe or Lebanon.
Jack is currently working on another project at the intersection of the natural world and human history. He is photographing the archeologic marks of the ancient Roman rule over Lebanon, left on Lebanon’s forests. He comes to Lebanon to work on this project but spends most of his time in Paris, France.
Edited byWafa Roz & Elsie Labban
Notes
1 Jack Dabaghian, accessed November 13, 2023, www.jackdabaghian.com. 2 Liam Sibai, Interview with Jack Dabaghian, other, Dalloul Art Foundation, 2023. 3 Liam Sibai, “Katya Traboulsi - Artists,” Dalloul Art Foundation, 2023, dafbeirut.org/en/KATYA... 4 “Druze,” Encyclopædia Britannica, November 13, 2023, www.britannica.com 5 “Retro Definition & Meaning,” Merriam-Webster, accessed November 14, 2023, www.merriam-webster.com 6 Mark Fisher : The Slow Cancellation Of The Future, YouTube (YouTube, 2014),
7 “Cultural Reforesting Explores – Mount Lebanon and the Cedar Tree,” Orleans House Gallery, February 3, 2022, https://www.orleanshousegallery.org/news/2022/02/cultural-reforesting-explores-mount-lebanon-and-the-cedartree/#:~:text=Native%20to%20the%20mountainous%20regions,of%20up%20to%2040%20metres. 8 Bisher Najjar: Syria and Lebanon, A Shared Culture & A Shared Struggle | Sarde (after Dinner) #109, YouTube (Sarde (After Dinner), 2023),
Sources
Artist Jack Dabaghian - Ewgalerie.com. Accessed November 13, 2023. ewgalerie.com
Bisher Najjar: Syria and Lebanon, A Shared Culture & A Shared Struggle | Sarde (after dinner) #109. YouTube. Sarde (After Dinner), 2023.
“Cultural Reforesting Explores – Mount Lebanon and the Cedar Tree.” Orleans House Gallery, February 3, 2022. https://www.orleanshousegallery.org/news/2022/02/cultural-reforesting-explores-mount-lebanon-and-the-cedar-tree/#:~:text=Native%20to%20the%20mountainous%20regions,of%20up%20to%2040%20metres.
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