Kaph Books Puts the Accent on Arab Artists
SOURCE: THE DAILY STAR
BY: LISA GOLDEN
ARLES, France/BEIRUT: Among the buzz of photographers, publishers and members of the public gathered around tables full of photobooks, stood Nadim Asfar.
The Beirut-born, Paris-based artist was at Cosmos-Arles Books – a venue at the opening week of Arles’ Rencontres de la photographie. He was signing his two titles: “Hyper Images” and “Habiter Le Jour.”
“When you work, you work on your own, in your house etc.,” Asfar told The Daily Star among a display of his books. “What is interesting is to throw your work into a very much larger context. … It makes you realize what’s special about [it], what people are actually looking at, what you still have to work on.
“In this festival specifically,” he added, “people come because they love photography … There is a real love and a real passion … to see pictures, to buy pictures, to buy books … You sense also your own responsibility to do something good.”
The Cosmos venue, set up from July 2-7, hosted not only the international book fair, but also a program of talks and panel discussions, exhibitions and more. Nour Salame, managing director and founder of Beirut publishing house Kaph Books – the publisher of Asfar’s two titles – was at the fair for the second time.
“The atmosphere is amazing,” she said as people milled between the tables. “There are a lot of people interested [in Kaph’s publications], who ask about the books, who ask about the artists.
“Sometimes they know them, sometimes they don’t. There is a great energy and a great interest in the books, so it’s very motivating.”
Kaph Books, which Salame founded at the end of 2015, specializes in art books. A newcomer to the established Lebanese publishing scene, it counts under a dozen publications for now and features the work of Lebanese artists including Asfar, Akram Zaatari, Lamia Joreige, Rabih Mroue and Ziad Antar.
It will be the first Middle Eastern publisher to exhibit at Paris Photo later this year.
“It was the most obvious [idea] to start with the Lebanese [artists] because we are in Beirut,” Salame said, but “we are expanding to the Middle East.”
Kaph, she explained, names a letter in several alphabets, including the Phoenician. For the publishing house, “it means the palm of the hand, as art and culture is an open hand toward others and is meant to be shared and to unite.”
Kaph Books is responding to a specific need of artists.
Highly customized and catering to a niche market, artist books often don’t conform to the criteria of larger, more established publishing houses, whether in Lebanon or abroad.
Having a book accepted by any publishing house is challenging, particularly as the industry continues to adjust to the impact of digital publishing. That leaves self-publishing – where the burden of everything from layout to printing, promotion and distribution falls to the individual.
“What we aim to do,” said Salame, who has a long-standing interest in art and publishing but whose background is in business, “is [to produce] high-quality art books … [whereby] each book is constructed as an individual object, done in collaboration with each artist so that the book has the identity of the artist, and is special.”
Establishing Kaph Books, she said, also came from what she saw as a paucity of efforts to preserve the work of artists and their practices in Lebanon and in the region.
Art books might sometimes be produced in partnership with an exhibition venue or as part of an art residency or grant, but, for most working artists, publishing a book that captures their exhibition or evolving practice is the exception rather than the rule.
While organizations such as the Arab Image Foundation and others are doing important work to preserve artwork and artistic practices in Lebanon and the region, there are few state-run initiatives.
The preservation of photography in particular can be seen as less important than the archiving and conserving of other cultural production, such as historic sites.
Ziad Antar, who attended Arles with Kaph Books last year and this year independently, had published several books abroad before working with Salame. “The spirit of image is not only when you click,” he said. “It’s the idea. It’s how you print.”
A longtime resident of France, the Sidon-born photographer returned to Lebanon around six years ago. Speaking to The Daily Star in Beirut, he said it was normal to work with a regional or Lebanese publisher – which implies publishing in Arabic.
“A big problem … [is] translating photography and [contemporary] art terminology into Arabic … the terminology in Arabic is very poor,” Antar observed. “There [are] a lot of challenges other than the design and the book itself.”
Asfar’s exhibition, “Where I end and you begin,” is currently showing at the Beiteddine Art Festival.
The show features his ongoing work on Lebanese landscapes – in contrast to his book “Habiter Le Jour,” which brings together images taken from his Beirut balcony.
“I did [it] a bit unconsciously,” Asfar said of “Habiter Le Jour.” “It was not thought of as a project but a ritual I was involved in.
“I used to stand on my balcony and [photograph things] under my balcony,” he said, “people, cars, trucks, water [tanks] … I documented this for years.
“Then at the end I did this book that tries to recreate a bit a kind of rhythm, a kind of texture of the street, the texture of the urban fabric, how the bodies of people can narrate something, and also my own relation to photography as a ritual as something, as a poetry that involves work, working habits.”
During Arles’ opening week, “Habiter Le Jour” was in incidental dialogue with the work of French photographer Stephane Lagoutte from Agence MYOP, which staged a group show in parallel to the Rencontres’ main program.
For the exhibition, Lagoutte – whose other work also includes a long-term project of scenes from Beirut juxtaposed with archive images; and photographs of refugees – displayed images of Beirut streets and buildings, focusing on people on their balconies.
Lagoutte’s accompanying text painted a dark view of the city.
“Photographing the streets of Beirut is not easy, because of security issues and the perpetual fear of a terrorist attack,” it read.
“Despite themselves [i.e. the people captured looking out from their balconies] their simple existence conveys the fear and suffering of their nation … They become heralds, bearing myths, and they announce future tragedies that will sweep inexorably the world.”
That’s Lagoutte’s perspective. Those of photographers framing their own terrain are more likely to transcend such stereotypes, and help shine a light on contemporary artistic practices in the country and the region. If Kaph Books can provide more space and visibility for such work, then surely that in itself is a positive contribution.
