Memory within and without the photographic frame: Wadad Halwani’s The Last Picture… While Crossing

Abstract

Wadad Halwani’s short documentary film, The Last Picture…While Crossing (2009), is in the main about the late Odette Salem, whose two children were disappeared in September 1985, during the civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990). This essay discusses how Halwani adapts photographs and previously made video footage to situate Salem as a site of memory. While the film constitutes a memorial practice to tell a story of Salem and her activist milieu, it works to situate memory of her plight as an ethical modality of address and response. In doing so, the film exposes a public audience, both actual and potential, to Salem’s and Halwani’s circumstances and their arduous efforts in engaging their circumstances. The argument foregrounds memory as a circumstantial tension between the significance and resonance of photographs, in respect to circulations of photographic reproductions and exhibitions as modalities of public exposure.

Revolution Beyond the Event

“…This would focus specifically on the beholder's subjectivity, giving attention to discursive and non-discursive forms of knowing, affective resonance, projections and desire. 'Presence' as analysed by Runia does not leave room for the agentive power of absence (see, for example, Crossland, 2002;Domanska, 2006;Fowles, 2010;Nikro, 2019). Umhani's brother's absent image had no less hold on her than those of her other brothers that she had preserved.…”

Mediterranean in Dis/order

“…This chapter is rooted in an interpretation of the cinematic image as a way to make tangible the ghosts of Lebanon's memories (Ayoub 2017;Khatib 2011). It is also based on research about the use of art as a memorial tool, particularly when it comes to the representation of space within an artistic framework (Nikro 2017(Nikro , 2019. The connection between politics, space, and film is explored by Ghada Rahal (2013), and I link this dimension with Robert Eid's work on memory and identity within postwar Lebanese cinema (2010).…”

Parallelotopia: Ottoman transcultural memory assemblages in contemporary art practices from the Middle East

“…Instead, assemblage provides the opportunity to discuss the mosaic, patchwork, heterogeneity, fluidity and transitory configurations of the Ottoman and ex-Ottoman societies then and now. As such, assemblage complements and moves forward debates on photography and memory as reenactments of the past through performances of memory (Kuhn, 2010) and photography as a circumstantial tension between the significance and resonance of photographs, in respect to circulations of photographic reproductions and exhibitions as modalities of public exposure (Nikro, 2019).…”