Third section of the Wonder Beirut project, 2009.

The "Latent Images / Diary of a photographer" book brings together 38 contact print photographs selected from the hundreds of films used and never developed, taken by photographer Abdallah Farah between 1997 and 2006. This book of 1312 pages, published in a limited edition – two editions of 75 numbered and signed copies, one in French and the other in English – offers an immersion to the very heart of these latent images. The description of the images replaces the photographs themselves; short fragments of text describe the invisible images while creating a new imagined space.
The original photographs of two letters, also numbered and signed, open the book; one is written by Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas, the other by Abdallah Farah. This exchange of correspondence between the artists and photographer sets the scene for the ties and project that form a link between them.Each film is presented to be seen and read in the form of a chapter: an original photograph of these films appears at the head of the chapter in the same way as photographs in a family album. The reader can thus move around freely in this assembly of photographic fragments, invent his own situations through the history of Abdallah Farah, read the story in chronological order or haphazardly. The book as a support to creation and circulation thus offers a new space for discovering these latent images. Some pages, closed, do not allow the vision of the images they contain; the reader is given the freedom to keep them closed or to open them and this influence their reading.Abdallah Farah is a character imagined by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. "Latent Images / Diary of a photographer" is thus a project signed by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.