LE ROCHER
2024
Family archives

While going through our archives, Sabyl and I discovered that we both had captured the same image of a distinctive rock formation in Chekka, in the north of Lebanon, a place deeply connected to our shared roots. These photographs, taken in the 1990s and 2000s, led to the inspiration for our project, which reflects on the intersections of memory and place.

Tanya et moi possédons l’exacte même photographie d’un rocher blanc accroché à une falaise qui se jette dans l’eau. Son père l’emmenait en felouka nager devant. Ma mère m’emmenait en felouka grimper dessus.
Nous observons ce rocher haut de vingt mètres, peut-être trente, peut-être quarante où j’hésitais adolescent à sauter ou plonger, je regarde la mer mais aussi l’horizon, je me demande ce qui différencie ce lieu des Calanques, d’un bord de mer grec ou sicilien, ce sont les mêmes nuances de bleu, la même eau, pourtant là, nous aimerions vivre et mourir.

Tanya and I both have the exact same photograph of a white rock clinging to a cliff that plunges into the sea. Her father would take her on a felucca to swim near it. My mother would take me on a felucca to climb it.
We gaze at this rock, which is twenty, maybe thirty, or even forty meters high—where I once stood as a teenager, hesitant about whether to jump or dive. As I look at the sea and the horizon, I wonder what sets this place apart from the Calanques or the coasts of Greece and Sicily. They all share the same shades of blue and the same water; yet, it is here that we would like to live and to die.

Sabyl Ghoussoub