Habib Dargham captures the essence of the Lebanese people’s revolt

Habib Dargham, guest on the set of 23 Hours, Friday 22 October, is the winner of the 2021 Grand Prix of the Paris Match student photo essay, in partnership with Franceinfo. He was rewarded for a photo captured on November 19, 2019 entitled “The cry of a silence”, on the revolt of the Lebanese people. You can see locals trying to break down a wall. “Behind this wall, there is the great theater of Lebanon, explains the Lebanese photojournalist. It has been closed since the Civil War in 1975. He is in danger of being destroyed.“

These Lebanese started hitting this wall “to assault the police who were trying to arrest us” as well as “to open this cultural space which was opened during independence“, describes Habib Dargham. The latter also indicates that he has started to photograph the Lebanese people “the first day of the revolution, October 17, 2019“. “Since then, I really went downstairs just to have fun, take a few pictures, and in the end, I found myself every evening, every day, friends who were in the demonstrations, who were telling me (…) to take pictures“, he says. Before adding: “The message I sent is what I felt in the demonstrations, he emphasizes. Before I was a photographer in the demonstrations, I felt in the demonstration. I was photographing the people who are revolting, but I am part of the people.”