Between High Rise and the Scent of Jasmine
A journey through the white city
I arrived to Syria with my vision of the Middle East formed by colorful photographs in guidebooks and magazines, evoking the tourist’s dream of the mysterious other and returning to days long gone and by images of violent conflicts used to sell yet another daily edition of newspapers. I was in search of neither utopia nor sensation, but a personal point of take off lying somewhere in between.
The journey through the white city is a travel between rising bright walls and declining clay walls. Where one past is removed with the gray rubble another is planted with white flowers and cast in blue fountains. Memories from hidden courtyards are relived on balconies balancing high above the ground in constructions, which conquer all sense of time. To live is under transformation to another scale and the uncertainty, traveling along with change, seems to drift quietly between the buildings blended with the familiar scent of jasmine.
Between High Rise and the Scent of Jasmine is a series of photographs made in Kafarsousek Tourism Complex during a three months residency at the Danish Institute in Damascus 2007.
A journey through the white city
I arrived to Syria with my vision of the Middle East formed by colorful photographs in guidebooks and magazines, evoking the tourist’s dream of the mysterious other and returning to days long gone and by images of violent conflicts used to sell yet another daily edition of newspapers. I was in search of neither utopia nor sensation, but a personal point of take off lying somewhere in between.
The journey through the white city is a travel between rising bright walls and declining clay walls. Where one past is removed with the gray rubble another is planted with white flowers and cast in blue fountains. Memories from hidden courtyards are relived on balconies balancing high above the ground in constructions, which conquer all sense of time. To live is under transformation to another scale and the uncertainty, traveling along with change, seems to drift quietly between the buildings blended with the familiar scent of jasmine.
Between High Rise and the Scent of Jasmine is a series of photographs made in Kafarsousek Tourism Complex during a three months residency at the Danish Institute in Damascus 2007.
