Diana Mehrez - Impression I

This series was photographed in Lebanon.
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The Impressions series aims to convey the prevailing sense of chaos and unrest in Beirut and other Lebanese cities. The profit oriented construction industry, outdated and unregulated laws, as well as the lack of proper control, result in a condensed and disorganized urban fabric often referred to as a “concrete jungle”. Through the use of a multiple exposure technique, this photographic series emphasizes the claustrophobic feel and the saturated nature of the portrayed areas. Creating this effect in camera without knowing the exact outcome in advance has an arbitrary quality to it, which is also a form of chaos. Each resulting photograph is an abstraction that translates the overwhelming essence of the city, while simultaneously resembling an impressionistic painting, or a memory. The Impressions series also represents the notion of Home, not in a direct portrayal of the places depicted, but in the layering, in the complexity, in the coexistence of ugliness and beauty, in the uncertainty of what it represents and in the organized chaos.