Image courtesy of Houda Kassatly and Alice Mogabgab Gallery. Taken in Borj el Barajneh, 2012

Explore this photographer’s images of Lebanon’s refugee camps in online exhibition

Photographer Houda Kassatly presents her work in a new online exhibition with Beirut’s Alice Mogabgab Gallery.

Lebanese photographer Houda Kassatly is running an online exhibition of her images with Beirut’s Alice Mogabgab Gallery until 23 May, 2020 due to the global Covid-19 pandemic. Entitled The Refugee’s Camps in Lebanon, the Unsustainable Precarity, the series consists of 100 images taken by the artist between 2012 and 2019, and features landscapes, interior scenes, still lives and portraits across multiple camps.

Through the visuals, Kassatly hopes to tackle various elements that colour life inside the camps, including identity, daily rituals and the architecture of the camps’ structures.

Image courtesy of Houda Kassatly and Alice Mogabgab Gallery. Taken in Bekaa, 2017

“Here, [the refugees] are trapped in issues that go far beyond their resources, victims of the blindness and criminal machinations of their elites,” said Alice Mogabgab Karam. “Tentanised and lonely in their double confinement imposed by the Covid-19, and by the complete bankruptcy of their country, the Lebanese people now take another look at their hosts.

“It is this look that Kassatly saw and captured as a pioneer, and that she offers through her photographs in this exhibition on the abjectly ferociousness of poverty and the sublime beauty of childhood innocence.”

Kassatly, who was born in Beirut, devotes her professional life to research and photography with a training background in ethnology. She has exhibited her work regularly in galleries and art centres across Europe and Beirut.

Her latest series is available for viewing on the gallery’s website here.