About The President’s Album, 2011 Part 2 of The Lebanese Rocket Society, Elements for a monument 32 Digital prints 800 x 120 cm each, fold in 32 parts Co-produced by Sharjah Biennial 10 The President’s Album is a photographic installation consisting of 32 identical eight-meter long photographs, each of which is folded into 32 parts. Each photograph presents a different section of the folded image to the viewer, so that the installation displays the entirety of the image. Each photo contains a composition of two images. Along the bottom of each folded section are archival images from the 32-page Lebanese Rocket Society photo album, originally offered to the then-President of Lebanon, Fouad Chehab, that documented the Cedar rocket launches. The second is part of an image of the Cedar IV Rocket, reproduced as a white sculpture by Hadjithomas and Joreige and installed at Haigazian University in 2011, but painted in its original Lebanese flag colors.
The President’s Album posits the image, its fragmentation, reconstitution, and recognition, as a tool for understanding the history of this rocket program. In each part lies a reminder that while the visible fold represents only a fragment of the rocket, the whole image, as well as its forgotten history, is potentially there, hidden.
