Beyrouth Panoramique – Antoine Atallah
Beyrouth Panoramique / بانوراما بيروت, a beautiful book from Plan Bey publishers, written by Antoine Atallah, designed by Safeya Fawzy and Karma Tohme using our Greta Text Arabic. This book traces the ever-changing historical landscape of Beirut through four panoramic photos (1870, 1910, 1952 and post-war) describing what is gone and what remained.
This book-object contains 4 folding leporellos featuring panoramic images of Beirut in 1870, 1920, and 1952, with annotations, a visual intervention and accompanying texts by architect, urban planner and activist Antoine Atallah. It “tells the story of Beirut through successive panoramic images taken from its historical center. It highlights the accelerated transformations of a capital in perpetual mutation through photographs annotated with the places that constituted the city during these different periods. This work describes the cultural influences, as well as the social, economic, and (geo)political factors that explain the diverse shapes taken by the city across time. It concludes with a “Ghost City,” a stark illustration of the rupture brought on by war and what followed.” — Plan Bey
