Beyrouth Aller-Retour by Fouad Elkoury: Fragments of Life from the Lebanese War

Abstract

This article explores Beyrouth aller-retour by the Lebanese author and photographer Fouad Elkoury, a photo-autobiographical work that offers an intimate and subjective vision of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). Drawing on semiotic approaches, the study analyzes how text and image interact, respond to one another, and complement each other to construct a singular and original narrative of the Lebanese conflict. The first part highlights how this visual-textual dispositif is traversed by a «rhetoric of the gaze» (Cometa 2016) of the in-between, establishing a complex perspective oscillating between proximity and distance, between emotional involvement and critical detachment. The second part examines the effects of this gaze on the representation of war, emphasizing the thematic and aesthetic choices that arise from it. The analysis also shows that Beyrouth aller-retour deconstructs the codes of photojournalistic reporting in order to question the very capacity of the image to depict violence. Rejecting any form of spectacularization of the conflict, Elkoury adopts an introspective approach in which visual silence becomes a subtle form of resistance to the horror experienced by Lebanese men and women between 1975 and 1990. Far from any documentary intent, the work creates a space of vision where war is no longer shown but thought through the evocative power of the everyday. Through the careful interplay between text and image, the study demonstrates that Elkoury develops a language of trace and absence, in which photography becomes a site of critical reflection on the limits of what can be seen and what can be said in the face of violence.