The Lost Legacy of a Lebanese Photographer

Dual citizen photographer Naji was on a trip to Dearborn, Michigan visiting family and friends, where he had lived from 1976 to 1992, when his home in Dahieh, Beirut was totally destroyed during an Israeli bombing that wiped out the whole neighborhood and all of his photographs and negatives of many decades along with it.

The only surviving legacy of his work where three digital mini contact sheets that he had previously left here in the US in a folder among other paperwork. They were made around 1993 from a now defunct technology, the Kodak Photo CD, as 5x5 inch dye sublimation prints, each containing 40 low resolution thumbnails .9 by .6 inch each.

Desperate to recover the images of family in Lebanon he had taken in 1992, when he first returned to his home country after 20 years of devastating wars, he put his faith in modern technology and scanned each thumbnail using various digital techniques hoping to reproduce the memories he cherished so much.

Even though the results provided impressions of his beloved extended family, they were nevertheless severely distorted and haunting as if in a terrible nightmare, further exasperating the living nightmare he has recently been going through.