The project The Circular Ruins takes us to a contemporary South Lebanon, nicknamed Nabil (the inverted version of “Liban”, meaning Lebanon in French) where neither the Sun nor death can look each other in the eye.

Spearheaded by photographer Orianne Ciantar Olive, the project tackles the issues of violence, occupation and forced exile, which have cyclically affected the territory for decades, and how these events impact both individuals and communities.

Through the visual research and experimental approach to the photographic medium, this body of work takes a sensitive look at the unfolding disaster, bearing witness to the complexity of territories in the making.

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Inspired by philosophy, literature, and poetry - the works of Etel Adnan, Jorge Luis Borges and Mahmoud Darwich in particular - The Circular Ruins is a photographic essay halfway between a metaphysical journey and a documentary account, rooted in the land of southern Lebanon and right up to the wall of Kfar Kila. An emblematic and empirical example of the endless repetition of history, including violence, forced exile and the impossibility of achieving peace, the wall becomes here, through a game of inversions, the prelude to an actuality that reveals itself in the shadows of reality. The use of inverted names, fictitious identities, inverted films and solarisations aims to reveal another side of history. By approaching the question of disaster visually, and by creating a dialogue between external tensions and internal conflicts, this project reveals the complexity of the future within a territory under constant threat from partisan or colonialist impulses.