Notebook volume 57: Livre d’or

In the wake of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90), Walid Raad produced a body of work exploring media representations of the conflict using the pseudonym "The Atlas Group." Often, as in this case, Raad attributed the original images used in these works to a fictional amateur photographer, Dr. Fadl Fakhouri. Each of the fifteen framed prints that make up Notebook volume 57: Livre d’or reproduce photographic collages featuring signs for doctors’ and dentists’ offices in downtown Beirut, arranged in contiguous groupings and adhered to paper. The first and last prints are images of a livre d’ôr (literally, golden book), or guestbook, suggesting that the work functions as a roster of the once besieged city’s former inhabitants, while the lists of degrees from European universities testify to the continued presence of former colonial powers in Lebanese political, social, and cultural life.