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Syria Al-Assad.
Text by Oliver Hartung.
Spector Books, New York, 2014.
128 pp.,
9¼x11¾x¼".
Publisher's Description
Between 2007 and 2009, former New York Times photographer Oliver Hartung traveled Syria documenting signs and monuments placed over the past 40 years in honor of the Assad regime. His book, Syria al-Assad, is a loose typology of these once-omnipresent objects of regime propaganda, both loved and hated by the population, that dominated Syria's visual culture. The signs, mostly photographed from moving vehicles, were located in what are now combat zones and no longer exist. In an attempt to capture the temporal nature of this embattled country and the fragility of its existence, each image is printed on paper perforated at the spine so it can be ripped out or removed as one wishes. Opposite each image is a translation of the Arabic on the signs and monuments. The book forms a hybrid conceptual project: socio-documentary photo series and extraordinary form of combat journalism. Syria al-Assad was first shown on the New York Times Lens Blog in June 2012.
View the work on New York Times Lens Blog
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