No Place to Swim, Caracalla family’s backyard, Baalbeck, Lebanon, Diab Alkarssifi 1989 (Limited Edition Print, 2015)
A handprinted b&w analogue fibre hand printed diptych
303x 230 mm, image size 273 x 179mm (both prints)
Edition of 15
Signed and numbered by Ania Dabrowska and Diab Alkarssifi
Unframed

Accompanied by a signed copy of the book in a specially made slip-case designed and produced by Book Works’ Studio.

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This edition has been produced on occasion of A Lebanese Archive: From the collection of Diab Alkarssifi  by Ania Dabrowska, co-published by Book Works and Arab Image Foundation.

About the work:
On one very hot , summer day, I visited the house of my auntie Khadija Caracalla. It was about 38 degrees. There was no place to swim in town but they had a little stream in the courtyard. We blocked its flow to flood the yard. Adults were hiding from the sun, children were splashing in the water. Soon, the adults joined the children and the whole family was playing in the water to cool down. – Diab Alkarssifi

A Lebanese Archive is based on a collection of archival photographs from Lebanon and the Middle East, which came into the hands of Ania Dabrowska in 2010 when she was a SPACE artist-in-residence at Arlington hostel Camden, London. It belongs to Diab Alkarssifi, a Lebanese émigré, who was living there at the time. The images were taken and collected by Alkarssifi over a lifetime: thousands of photographic prints, and negatives, including his numerous photographic assignments, images of everyday life in his home city of Baalbeck on the Syrian border and in Beirut, his student years in the early 1970s in Moscow and Budapest and, most extraordinarily his collection of found images from studios in Baalbeck, Beirut, Damascus and Cairo – photographs of society, family and friends, and Arab life in Lebanon, Palestine, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria and Iraq, that he passionately accumulated and saved. These images, all that survives of a much larger collection still hidden or lost in Lebanon, gives an intimate insight into the cultural, everyday and political history of this region, from 1993 to as far back as 1889.

About the artist:
Ania Dabrowska is an award winning artist living in London. She works with photography, moving image, installation, text and sound, and has a particular interest in the political and creative potency of archives within contemporary culture. She has exhibited in solo and group shows in the UK, Germany, USA, India since 2001. Winner of the Observer Hodge Photographic Award, 2003, selected for the National Portrait Gallery Photographic Portrait Award, 2007, awarded The Wellcome Trust People Award, 2008-11. International residencies: Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2014), SPACE /Arlington, London (2010-2012), Dharamshala International Artists Workshop, Khoj International Artists Association, Delhi, and White Crane Arts & Media, Dharamshala, India (2012).

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