Gregory Buchakjian


Gregory Buchakjian is a Lebanese photographer, filmmaker and art historian. He studied at the Paris-Sorbonne University. He is the director of the School of Visual Arts at Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts ALBA and was co founder, with architects Pierre Hage Boutros and Rana Haddad, of Atelier de Recherche ALBA.
From 2012 to 2019, Buchakjian has been a member of the advisory committee of the Saradar Collection, devoted to Lebanese art from the contemporary and modern periods.

Work

Buchakjian emerged in the art scene after the 2006 Lebanon War within a collective of Lebanese filmmakers. He directed What Shoes, a short animation film presented as part of the Videos Under Siege project featured in the Dubai International Film Festival 2008.
In the following years, he slipped into Beirut's vibrant and underground nightlife. His photographs depict sensuality although violence and anxiety remain hidden. Taking its name "Nighthawks" from a famous painting by Edward Hopper, the project was exhibited in Der Aa-kerk, Groningen as part of the 18th Noorderlicht Photofestival 2011: Metropolis. In the aftermath, Buchakjian produced a scholarly study on the history of nightlife photography in Lebanon.
Buchakjian was part of The Place that Remains, the first national Pavilion of Lebanon curated by Hala Younes at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture.
After the eruption of the 2019–2020 Lebanese protests, he collected screenshots of photographs, videos, drawings and texts published on social media. The first 480 in order of appearance were gathered in the work Thawra Stories followed by the list of the instagram accounts where they were released.

Abandoned dwellings

From 2009 to 2016, Buchakjian constituted a long-term research and exploration devoted to abandoned dwellings in Beirut that involved a PhD dissertation. In this context, he collaborated with Said Baalbaki on a lithography artist book based on Wadi Abu Jamil, the former Jewish Quarter of Beirut, where Baalbaki grew up, that was witnessed dramatic transformations during the war and postwar periods. He also exhibited, in dialogue with François Sargologo, photographic ruins extracted from a building that was allegedly inhabited by a member of the General Command of “Al Assifa” forces within the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The artistic project was disclosed in 2018 with an exhibition curated by Karina El Helou at Beirut's Sursock Museum. It included staged photographs of human figures wandering in the ruins, an apparatus displaying data sheets for 700 buildings and a video in which Buchakjian and Valerie Cachard manipulate, examine and read extracts from hundreds of documents they collected during their visits. In the second installment at Brussel’s Villa Empain, one entire room was exclusively about the house of former prime minister Takieddin el-Solh, with drawings made after objects found on the grounds and two pictures of the same space, one by Buchakjian and one taken in 1984 by Fouad Elkoury.

Publications

Solo exhibitions