Marc Abou Jaoude is a Beirut-born documentary photographer based in Dubai. Over more than a decade his work has moved from the streets of Beirut to refugee settlements on the Syrian border, with projects on Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Greece. A HIPA Award recipient (2021), he has worked with the UN, UNICEF, Care International and World Vision. He is co-founder of Spice Photography, a commercial studio across Lebanon, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
www.instagram.com/ajmarc/
Mesh
I wasn’t trying to photograph separation. I spent six weeks between Dubai and Lebanon with one small camera, shooting whatever held me, and it was only later, going through the files, that I noticed something I’d never decided to do: in almost every frame I’m standing behind something. A cage. A fence. A window screen. Blinds. A stack of balconies. A net.
All of them made of parallel lines.
A grid is the one place parallel lines get to cross, and what you end up with is a wall. They touch so that nothing can pass between them. That’s the thing I keep photographing without meaning to.
The sequence walks through it. Two players held apart on a court. A cabin of strangers in identical rows, everyone facing forward, nobody turned. Two electricity meters on one wall, because my country runs two power grids and which one you’re on isn’t a technical detail, it’s an income bracket.
Then, once, nothing in the way at all — two young women, one veiled and one not, sharing a table.
I didn’t end there. The grids come back. What ends it is a ceiling of parallel canes all meeting at one point of light, and the only reason they meet is that I lay down underneath it.