JTF (just the facts): Published in 2024 by Dunes Editions (here). Hardcover with spiral metal binding (16 x 24 cm), 138 pages, with 74 color and black and white photographs. Includes poems by the artist and an essay by Sabyl Ghoussoub. Design by Bureau Kayser. In an edition of 1000 copies. (Cover and spread shots below.)
Comments/Context: Orianne Ciantar Olive was born in Marseille, France. Her mother is Maltese and her father is Franco-Swiss, and she spent her childhood living between Europe and the Americas. As an artist, she explores philosophy, poetry, history, and visual research, and one of the key topics in her work is the question of becoming, as well as her “research and experimentation into the shifting of the gaze.” On February 26, 2022, at the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, she founded a digital platform, Stuck In Here, to disseminate photographs and testimonies from young people trapped in war situations. It was later released as a photobook.
This past summer, Ciantar Olive released her first monograph, with the French publishing house Dunes Editions. Titled Les Ruines Circulaires (which translates as “the circular ruins” from French), the book offers a visual journey through South Lebanon, nicknamed Nabil (the inverted version of “Liban”, from Lebanon in French), where “neither the Sun nor death can look each other in the eye.” In particular, she takes us to Kfar Kila, a small town in southern Lebanon chosen by Israel in 2012 as the location to lay the first stones of the wall that will separate it from its neighbor. The book is a mediation about contemporary Lebanon, which “tackles the issues of violence, occupation and forced exile.”
The title of the book is borrowed from a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, the story of a dreamer who is dreaming (gradually realizing that he himself is someone else’s dream). Les Ruines Circulaires is a hardcover book and its spiral metal binding matches the brownish colors of the cover. An abstract image on the cover resembles the sun, and tiny letters in gold are debossed all over the cover repeating the title of the book, adding a tactile experience. Inside, there are both black-and-white and color photographs, and the color pictures have a rich cast of yellow, brown, or orange. The images are printed full bleed and the pages without visuals are black, with different types of paper used. The book also has a number of fold outs with additional photographs, and shorter pages either with poems by the artist or photographs. There are no page numbers and the list of captions appears at the very end, printed in silver font on black paper. Overall, the book keeps us immersed in its very abstract visual flow.
The symbol of the sun plays an important role in Ciantar Olive’s series, and she sees it as linked to both life and death. This duality runs through the project, her photographs appearing both photojournalistic and poetic. Ciantar Olive says that reversing things (as in case with Nabil) was an active and deliberate part of her creative process. She also inverted the film in her camera, photographing on the back, and as a result, her images appear with a vivid red, orange, yellow color cast, also making a connection to her the idea of the sun as a common thread. She also experimented with solarization, reversing the tonalities of an image and bringing forward secondary outlines.
An image of the wall on the Lebanese-Israeli border in Kfar Kila, blurry with a yellow cast, takes up the entire first spread, and as a symbol of an ongoing conflict, it serves as a poignant opening image to the book. It is followed by a photograph of a woman (her name is Hiba) lying on the ground with her eyes closed, touching the surface with her hands, and then there is a blurry, out of focus shot of two people embracing. This opening sequence is followed by a spread pairing a photogram of tangled barb wires with a reversed shot of a rocket with huge letters reading “Made in U.S.A.” (the caption reads “In My Name (the bomb)”), making a connection between the two.
Documenting the country and its people affected by a conflict that seems to have no end, Ciantar Olive’s photographs are pierced with fear and terror. She includes images of ghostly silhouettes, cemeteries, ashes, piles of rubbles, deserted streets, abandoned structures, and torn flags, creating a consistent sense of instability. A spread with a tall building standing alone against an orange background unfolds to reveal a sequence in which the building is being erased. More broadly, a feeling of catastrophe runs throughout the book. The poems interrupt the images and are printed on small inserts in silver font, and Ciantar Olive’s voice feels particularly militant. This sentence sums up the aim of Ciantar Olive’s project, “Heroes die because the world turns, / revolves around the Sun / it, too, dying”.
As a photobook, Les Ruines Circulaires is well conceived, thoughtfully designed, and beautifully produced, and it is a well crafted object, executed in excellent print quality and paper. In it, Ciantar Olive delivers an arresting and almost traumatizing visual flow, inviting us to actively engage with its seething colors and fraught moments, and ultimately encouraging us to expand our perception and emotional understanding of the events taking place there.
Collector’s POV: Orianne Ciantar Olive does not appear to have consistent gallery representation at this time. As a result, interested collectors should likely follow up directly with the artist via her website (linked in the sidebar).
