In Lebanon, a country undergoing such an existential crisis, guardians of the country’s memory are bringing its glorious past to light. Being a great collector of photos, Georges Boustany is one of those guardians. Over the years, he has acquired some 10,000 photos that tell a thousand stories from the past. From the time when Lebanon was dubbed the ‘Switzerland of the Middle East’ and Beirut represented the inescapable hub between the East and the West. Georges Boustany published a first book, Avant d’Oublier in French, which means Before Forgetting, and a second edition of the book at Beit Beirut, as part of the Allo Beirut exhibition, an amazing immersive journey into Beirut of yesterday and the one of today..
Tell us what motivated you to write your first book Avant d’Oublier…
My work is about preserving memory. I started archiving newspaper clippings at the age of eight, at the beginning of the war, because I already had the feeling that what I was experiencing was not normal and I did not want this memory to be lost. I continued this work all my life with sound, video recordings, and photos as well. On April 13 2015, I launched my Facebook page labelled “The Lebanese War Day by Day”, to mark the 40th anniversary of the civil war.
Avant d’Oublier is not only about my memory, but also the memory of our ancestors, including photos of anonymous people from the past century. It all started in 2017 when the French-language daily L’Orient-Le Jour published some of my photos with a brief caption which were greatly appreciated by readers.
Since photos represent our collective memory, I decided to collect them in the format of an art book, where one could admire them in all their splendor. It is in a way the culmination of my work on memory: Avant d’Oublier is what I believe must not disappear, be it photos or information about the daily life of those who have been there before us. This is what I wish to transmit to my children so that they’d understand their roots.
Why did you have a second edition of Avant d’Oublier?
The first book included the material published in L’Orient Le Jour between 2017 and 2019 while the second covers those from 2019 to 2021. Since the publication of the first book, Lebanon has witnessed an economic and financial crisis, the revolution of October 17, 2019, the pandemic, the explosion on August 4, 2020, the bankruptcy of the state, and the list goes on. The choice of my photos and the words I use to portray them offer a perspective on the reason we got here. The truth is that those who govern us want us to forget that we have a past.
You have the largest collection of photos of Beirut, yet you left it
I don’t claim to have the largest collection of photos of old Beirut ! I “only” have ten thousand. Nevertheless, as a private collector, I think I have a large collection, especially since I acquired them one by one with my own money, taking the time to select them for various reasons such as the information they provide, the inherent quality of the photo, the beauty of the object, etc. The photos are now digitized, referenced, classified in albums and the whole collection is deposited at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, USEK, which is in charge of their conservation.
Living abroad was an opportunity for me to put my ideas in place and to understand why, despite everything, I prefer life in Lebanon. This country is really a mystery. No matter what you do, you always go back to it – and I mentioned this in a sentence: “Beirut will follow you until your last breath…”.
Do you think there is still room for hope in Lebanon?
It is still possible to hope. We could not have survived in this country where we have seen everything, endured everything in endless torture, if we did not always see the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t dare to imagine that there is no hope, I am convinced that our political and economic problems can be solved. We have such a generous country! Having experienced the harshness of the desert climate, I came back to Lebanon with my eyes wide open to all this greenery, the temperate and pleasant climate, the sun that caresses and tans without attacking, and our ever-present rivers. As long as there is something left of this country’s generosity, there is hope.