Aftermath of War
A girl is learning to juggle, deeply concentrating on the three balls in the air, a man in the background is jumping rope so close to the edge of the building that he looks like he is about to take flight, a soccer ball casually lays of the ground while a Lebanese flag hangs on a laundry wire blowing in the air. It could be a scene at any summer camp. I was taken by the flurry of activity going on, the teenagers playing, the beauty of the hills in the background that I did not immediately notice the schizophrenic aspect of the whole situation: life going on within a the skeleton of a building, a building where all the walls have been blown up. It was one of the many images of life and destruction side by side that I got to see in Lebanon.
These images are from the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990, the war between Hezbollah and Israel in the summer of 2006, and the war between the Lebanese army and suspected terrorists who infiltrated Nahr El Bared refugee camp in Tripoli in the north of the country in 2007. They are images of aftermath and rebirth. Those wars had different objectives, involved different players, and occurred at different times, but ultimately the effects on innocent people and the aftermath were similar – destruction, loss, and human suffering.
When the media covers wars, the dead are shown as corpses, identified by numbers, and referred to as collateral damage. For people living far from real conflicts, war is abstracted. They see images of destruction: places they do not relate to, and hear the number of dead: people they do not know. Through my images I hope to honor some of the people who have to deal with war's devastating realities intruding in their daily lives. War is only half the story; the other half, the aftermath, is often ignored and forgotten. It could be any war and any time. Once it ends, it fades from public attention. The people who lived and suffered through it, who lost homes, family members, and friends become forgotten. They have to deal with the reality of their loss and the difficult task of rebuilding their shattered lives, while the world's attention moves on to the next crisis.
What struck me and humbled me most was how quickly people, seasoned by the experience of war, resumed their lives, how they picked up the pieces and moved on to preserve their dignity, their children, and their spirit, a humanity that shines through the destruction and rises above the rubble.
– R. M.