Leslie Hakim-Dowek's Exhibitions
The solo exhibition has opened on Thursday 5 November at the SPACE Gallery in Portsmouth and will run until 26 November 2009.
The exhibition includes two photographic series never shown before : The City That Exploded Slowly (Part One) and Watching for which an essay by Roy Exley has been specially commissioned. The Portsmouth News has done a double-page feature on the exhibition on the first day of opening.
A selection from Watching is also showing at the ‘Brighton Photo Fringe ‘09’ which has now been extended until 29 November 2009.
Watching focuses on the rituals of ‘nature tourists’ looking for a spot of release and contemplation at various beauty spots across Britain from Birling Gap on the south coast to Longland Fell in the Lake District. In these large colour photographs, I explore our need to experience something ‘other’ than us in nature yet looking at a landscape that is in most parts man-made.
In the photo-text series The City That Exploded Slowly (Part One), I attempt to map out a ‘personal archaeology’ encompassing the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) and exile. A parallel is drawn between a personal tale and Beirut through its many transformations of destruction and wilderness. The centre of Beirut was an ancient and complex place, the site of many missing cities. The first mutation of Beirut was by fire and it became a feral terrain detonated by sonic calamities. After the war, the whole place was remodelled to erase an unpleasant past and transformed into a colourless homogenous place within a tide of oblivion. Like my mother before me, Beirut lives on in the space of our dreams and cannot be expunged from our cells. Each of us has a city that lives on in us and has the value of our dreams.
The series combines creative writing, family and colour photographs taken during my return visits and each wall-composition includes two prints and the accompanying text – all framed.
Brighton Photo Fringe ‘09: iCrossing, Moore House, 13 Black Lion Street, Brighton BN11ND / 17 October – 29 November 2009 / Fri-Sun: 12 – 5 pm
Solo Exhibition : New Photographic Series: SPACE Gallery, Winston Churchill Avenue, Portsmouth PO1 2DJ / 5 – 26 November 2009 / Mon–Fri: 10 – 4 pm
For further information about the work and forthcoming events, please visit: www.lesliehakimdowek.net
Posted by Maria Kapajeva on November 16th 2009
News Archive
News Categories
- Competition (8)
- Events (107)
- Exhibitions (29)
- Inspiration (10)
- Site Update (16)
- Submission (345)
- Student success (93)
Photographer's Gallery
American Suburb X
- INTERVIEW: “An Interview with Bruce Wrighton” (1988)
- ASX.TV: Henri Cartier-Bresson – “The Impassioned Eye” (2003)
- BILL OWENS: “Suburbia” (1972)
- JACK DELANO: “Select Pictures from the FSA Project”
- JEFF BROUWS: “It Don’t Exist – The Impact of Sprawl and Suburban Build-out on Inner City America” (2009)
- JOHN BANASIAK: “George Brown’s Bar” (1970)
- INTERVIEW: “Interview with Jack and Irene Delano” (1965)
- HELEN LEVITT: “Color” (1971-1981)