Space for reflection

Nilu Izadi's hauntingly beautiful photographs were taken in an abandoned war-damaged building that was once an elegant home in Beirut. The pictures of bullet-ridden walls, crumbling verandahs and rooms full of rubble capture the original beauty of the house and the violence, destruction and desolation it has witnessed. But the unusual aspect of her exhibition, titled The Yellow House, Beirut 1924-2010, is a series of photographs that show inverted images of blue skies, modern skyscrapers and passers-by on the street outside the house, reflected on its battle-scarred walls. These images have been created by a camera obscura installation in a room of the house. And the interesting part is that Izadi has used a bullet hole as the aperture through which images of the outside come into the house.

Camera obscura (Latin for dark room) is an optical phenomenon explained by a simple law of physics. If you go into a very dark room on a bright day, cover the window and then make a small hole in the screen, you will see on the opposite wall a full colour, moving image of the outside world. But the image is upside down. This is because light travels in a straight line. So, when the rays pass through a small hole they do not scatter but cross and re-form an inverted image on any flat surface parallel to the hole. This optical device has long been used by scientists and artists to study light and images. In the 16th century, the image quality was sharpened by the addition of a convex lens and a mirror to reflect the image down on to a viewing surface. The camera obscura then became widely used as a drawing tool and eventually evolved into the photographic camera and later cinema.

Izadi is a photographer who delights in this ancient technique and celebrates it in her work. The London-based artist travels around the world to create interesting camera obscura installations that combine architecture, physics, art and local culture. The variety of locations that she has converted into camera obscura installations include a storage tank in a school playground in England, a shed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, an army bunker in Spain, a beach hut in India and a refugee tent in Algeria.

But The Yellow House project takes her work to a different level. "My previous work was more about technique. But this time I wanted to give more meaning to my work on many levels by connecting the various elements. Rather than simply relying on the projections and interior space, I wanted to use the aperture of my camera obscura as the foundation of the installation. So, this project marks a turning point in my work," says Izadi. The artist, who is of Iranian origin, was born and raised in London. And her distant experience of the Iranian revolution motivated her to seek out a building that still has traces of war, so that she could pay homage to her own heritage. When she heard about the Yellow House from a friend, she immediately made plans to visit Beirut.

Thanks to its architecture and its history, the house was the perfect location for this project. Commissioned in 1924 by the Barakat family, the building, designed by Youssef Aftimos in the picturesque French Mandate style, is a work of genius, affording a view on to the street from every room, through widows, verandahs and doorways. The building was built on the outskirts of Beirut but the city developed quickly and by the time the war started in 1975, the house was located exactly on the demarcation line dividing east and west. Due to its strategic positioning, the Christian militia reappropriated the interior spaces to build their bunkers and snipers' nests.

"This house has seen Beirut through her grandest and bloodiest turns. Thanks to the building's exceptional layered vistas, the gunmen could hide in the dark recesses while commanding the street corner from virtual obscurity. The billions of bullet marks, the militia's cedar tree symbol and posters of their leaders on the crumbling walls are a chilling reminder of the terror of conflict.

"By using one of the bullet holes which had pierced the stone walls, to convert a room in the house into a camera obscura installation, I have brought projections of the front line back into the heart of the snipers' nest. Projections of people walk across the bullet ridden walls, clouds move silently over the rubble left by war, images are turned back on to themselves, the outside now looking in," Izadi says.

"My aim was to bring the present back into a space which had stopped in time. The projections of everyday life in a space which still shows the scars of war speak about the resilience of the human spirit and the fact that life moves on. The walls of the yellow house were brought alive on so many levels for the first time in over 30 years, bringing the present and past together. It was a moving and inspiring experience," she adds.

Jyoti Kalsi is a UAE-based art enthusiast.

The Yellow House, Beirut 1924-2010 has been organised in collaboration with Janet Rady Fine Art, London, and will run at Total Arts Gallery, Dubai, until November 15.