LET US STOP AND WEEP – وقوف على الأطلال is a body of work inspired by the poetry and life of Imru’l Qais – امرؤ القيس, an Arab poet and author of one of the 7 famous “suspended poems” from the time of Jahiliyyah, the pre-Islamic era. It's composed by images, objects, documents, archives, texts and audiovisual materials. They are a meditation on origins; its ruins and wanderings. Since my escape from Lebanon on a high speed ferry, toward the end of the civil war, the visits to the country of my birth are rare. After several failed attempts to document these few "returns", I ended up discovering locations of unexplored territories and prohibited traumascapes* of those years lived in Lebanon, extending my travel towards "home". Instead of approaching destination, the journey seemed endless, as if returning was impossible and self-exile had become a state of spirit. Awaiting oblivion, these findings were morphed into short narrations, visual or written, of elements that were rescued out of the treasure island's box called 'childhood'. Since the beginning of this journey in 2000, I also harbored some objects and items, 'survivors' from other migrations. This series is achieved through a disposition of meanings, a detailed description and a creative comparison of reality. At times, it longs to the obscene and to laceration, and others to the noble and to the sovereign. *Traumascapes are sites associated with the painful past. Remembering and representing this bitter past plays a crucial role in shaping the future through learning and experiencing. ASNAM – أصنام is a section of LET US STOP AND WEEP, and one of those hikayat (stories). ASNAM, in Arabic, is idol statues. In 2009, I carried out my first photographic documentation and collection of the presence of religious statues in certain Christian Lebanese regions. For the first time in the urban landscape, almost 20 years after I left the country, big statues of Christ, Virgin Mary, saints and angels, started appearing outside the usual religious sanctuaries. I grew up in a village on the mountains of Metn and schooled in a Maronite christian french college. Those statues recalled reproductions or have the postures and expressions appearing on printed small icons, once received as a reward for good behavior, during catechism classes. In my next visit to Lebanon, I found in a drawer this childhood collection of holy icons and decided to continue documenting this phenomenon with subtlety, alienation and humor, with melancholy, but without snickering. Visit after visit, those statues kept on increasing in number. The more this sacred appearance populated the landscape, it became a territorial marker of identity, in a general religious upmanship, but also the sign of a sincere request for divine protection and sanctity. This newly generated collection of statues, ASNAM, captivate me for its aesthetics and for the fact that it resonate political, social, religious and profane issues in today's Lebanon.