It’s strange how images can bring the past into such sharp focus. These photographs, tucked away for years, pulled me back into moments that feel both distant and intimately familiar. Each frame from China in 2009 carries the sound of the shutter, the scent of the landscape, and the silent connection formed with strangers met on dusty paths.
I’ve never really forgotten why I travel or photograph. It’s not a memory to retrieve—it's more like a constant pulse that sometimes quiets under the noise of daily life. But seeing these again—on the Great Wall, on riverboats, walking the alleys of water towns, speaking with women balancing baskets—reminds me of how that camera has always been more than just a tool. It’s been a bridge.
Leaving Lebanon in 1987 was the start of everything. At the time, I didn’t know photography would be my companion. I just felt the world needed to be seen. Over the years, I learned that the act of looking—through a lens or directly into someone’s eyes—reveals so much. Their lives, their joys, their challenges, and their humanity. The photos are just one way of saying: I see you.
And now, while wars brew and tensions rise again, I return to these scenes not just for nostalgia, but as a quiet protest against what is broken. Because there is still so much worth discovering in each other. The road is always there, and so is the viewfinder.
3 responses to “The Viewfinder and the Road~”
It must have been a unique experience to travel so much in China at that time. A time when one could think the old antagonisms were a thing of the past. (How wrong we were…) but most of all you must have accumulated such a wealth of first-hand knowledge about China… A telltale detail: the woman carrying he child in the balancing basket… Wonderful.
Thank you. Yes, these experiences have a warm place in my heart.
Have you considered going back to China for a few weeks? To measure the passing of time there? I don’t know whether visas might be difficult now?