Life through an FSA fighter’s chest

Emeric Lhuisset lectures on the relationship between contemporary art and geopolitics at Science Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies. He specializes in the representation of conflict from 1850 until the present day, speculating on what the future might have in store for war photography and photojournalists. When he is not teaching, he visits war zones, from Iraq to Syria to Afghanistan. He turns his camera not on conflict itself, but its representation. His practice traverses the blurred territory between fine art and journalism, raising questions about whether the narrow lens can ever capture “reality.”

His latest work, “Chebab,” reprises many of the themes addressed in “Theater of War,” his solo exhibition at the Running Horse last December, questioning the role of the photographer in war zones, the taboo subject of staging in journalism, media representations of conflict, and the point at which journalism becomes art.

A 24-hour-long loop of footage, shot entirely with a small camera strapped to the chest of a Free Syrian Army fighter, “Chebab” is intended to show the daily realities of a combatant’s life.
Lhuisset researched local perspectives on the Syrian conflict in neighboring Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon before visiting Syria in June 2012. He spent several weeks alongside a group of rebels in a mountain cave in Idlib Province, near Aleppo, witnessing their nighttime skirmishes with regime forces and taking shelter during the day as bombs fell around their hideout.

When he returned to shoot the film in August, everything had changed. “I arrived just at the battle of Bab al-Hawa,” he recalls, “when the rebels took the border between Turkey and Syria. After that they controlled the whole area.”

“Chebab” was made during this period of relative calm. The film captures a routine in which the rebels, no longer hidden, ride their mopeds around local villages and store their guns inside an old wooden wardrobe – ammunition belts draped within like avant-garde fashion accessories.

“It aims to show the daily life of these combatants,” emphasizes Lhuisset, “who are either idolized by those who consider them freedom fighters, or demonized by those who consider them terrorists. ... It’s a way of rehumanizing the fighters.

“Perhaps in Lebanon this rehumanization has less meaning,” he continues. “Lebanon has really known conflict ... So there is less mysticism about the combatants. In the West there is truly a sort of mysticism around these men, whereas in fact if we found ourselves in their situation perhaps we too would be combatants.”

The footage in “Chebab” in many ways reflects mainstream media representations of the conflict – with most images taken not by photojournalists but combatants and activists using mobile phones.

“It was the fighter who did the video,” Lhuisset clarifies. “For me it was very important for different reasons. Firstly to present the vision of the fighter, rather than my vision, but it was also important because it’s the representation of conflict today. “War photographers have to be closer and closer to the fight, but ... the fighter is always closer than a reporter, because the fighter is an actor of this war, while the reporter is just a witness.”

If you discard the premise that journalism is the documentation of an event by disinterested observers, Lhuisset’s film could be classed as “journalism.” The photographer believes that, in form and intent, the film is art. Journalists, he stresses, are interested in photographing action. They are looking for dramatic images: soldiers shooting, cars burning, bombs exploding. That, Lhuisset maintains, is not what characterizes conflict.

“There are events, but it’s not constant,” he says. “The constant of conflict is waiting. It’s all these day-to-day tasks that create tension, because you never know what will happen in the course of a day. When you wake up in the morning, you have no idea if you will be alive to go to bed – perhaps you will be dead by evening.

“I’m trying to show the routine that establishes itself,” he says. “They watch football on television. They chat with their friends. They crack jokes. They take a little ride on their mopeds. It’s daily life.”
The video does convey how, even in the midst of conflict, routine prevails.

For an hour of the film the cameraman is sleeping, Lhuisset says, and nothing is visible but a patch of the ceiling above his bed. In the morning the camera bears witness as he wakes up and goes to brush his teeth and wash his face.

Lhuisset’s project removes the artist’s overt control over the image, yet the FSA man’s awareness of the camera inevitably colors his behavior. Absenting the dispassionate cameraman makes this work reminiscent of that of “embedded” journalists, broadcast prominently during the 2003 Iraq invasion – reaffirming contemporary critique that such one-sided reportage is “journalism” at all. “Sometimes he forgets [the camera],” Lhuisset observes. “He just goes about his normal life, and sometimes he thinks, ‘I need to do something.’ He becomes a man with a mission. ... He arrives somewhere and he starts to show the place off. Then he meets a friend and he forgets the camera again. The video is somewhere in between those two extremes.”

The simple camera with which Lhuisset chose to film renders the work haphazard and slightly surreal. Strapped to the fighter’s chest, the camera’s footage is often off- kilter, slightly above or to one side of the natural point of focus. It also distorts close- ups, giving certain sequences a strange fish-eye effect.

As Lhuisset explains, “Chebab” references his 2006 project, “Mother f**ker, burn!” It was a “work on the relationship between video games and war, reality and fiction,” he says. “We see the forearms of the fighter, which recreates the layout of a video game. For me it’s extremely interesting, because it allows the viewer to be integrated into the world of the character.”

At 24-hours in length, the video can only be viewed in segments. “The idea is not to watch the whole film,” Lhuisset explains. “You pass by and say, ‘Okay, when I am ready to eat a sandwich at lunchtime, what is going on with the fighters?’”
Lhuisset has already shown the video in Paris and hopes to exhibit in noncommercial art spaces, or even political venues, across Europe. He is hesitant to show it in Lebanon.

“The tension is too strong here,” he says. “I’m not here to throw oil on the fire. ... It’s not my role. Lebanon is too implicated in this conflict to show it now. Maybe later.” The photographer is philosophical about how his work is characterized. “People ask me ‘Is this art or journalism?’” he says. “For me it’s more art, because of the format, [but] the question doesn’t concern me. ... It’s not important what it is, what’s important is what it causes you to think about.”