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Course: Tate > Unit 2
Lesson 3: Documenting Conflict- Conflict, time, and photography
- The Berlin Wall and industrial England: Don McCullin's conflict photography
- Kurt Schwitters' wartime portraits
- Traces of illegal migration in Mexico: Mark Ruwedel
- Shai Kremer in an Israeli military training stage
- Burke and Norfolk: Photographs from the war In Afghanistan
- Hrair Sarkissian: Syria's "Execution Squares"
- Key Points
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Hrair Sarkissian: Syria's "Execution Squares"
This video brought to you by Tate.org.uk
Syrian artist Hrair Sarkissian was profoundly marked after witnessing a public execution as a child. Having grown up around photographs, Sarkissian decided to use his craft to engage with and document the places that have haunted him the most. Taken in the Syrian cities of Damascus, Aleppo, and Lattakia, Execution Squares takes us to the major public squares in which executions have taken place for civil rather than political crimes. Sarkissian photographed the squares in the early morning when the streets were quiet, around the time when executions are typically carried out.
Syrian artist Hrair Sarkissian was profoundly marked after witnessing a public execution as a child. Having grown up around photographs, Sarkissian decided to use his craft to engage with and document the places that have haunted him the most. Taken in the Syrian cities of Damascus, Aleppo, and Lattakia, Execution Squares takes us to the major public squares in which executions have taken place for civil rather than political crimes. Sarkissian photographed the squares in the early morning when the streets were quiet, around the time when executions are typically carried out.
Does seeing these empty squares encourage you to imagine that these peaceful places, and that no such acts of violence could have occurred there? Or does knowing Sarkissian’s stories of what really happened give these photographs new meaning?
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Did anyone else notice the representation of 'three' (as in the three bodies the poor guy saw as a child), in a few of the photos? Three prominent and centralized structures, or large vertical images...(7 votes)
Video transcript
Oh I was seventh grade 12 13 years old it was 630 in the morning certainly i just stumbled across these three hanging bodies in the middle of this square very close to my father's shop where i used to go every day they were topless but there was this big white piece of paper and it described on this paper why they were committed the eyes were open and that's how i just had this one second how do you say we just I saw them and and this image it's it never gone away from my memory my father used to be a freelance photographer wedding and portrait he got this idea of opening the first color lab for developing and printing films in Syria and in this shop I grew up and this was my university let's say these places are public execution squares discontinued from the Ottomans and until this recent days of course these photos were taken in three cities in Syria that was in 2008 Damascus Aleppo and Latakia they were all taken when the Sun was rising that's why all these squares are empty usually these are the main public squares in the city I try to include the surrounding of the square because people used to stand everywhere from every angle they used to see the Hangul bodies this was the purpose of the squares I thought photography could help me with erasing this and just to confirm that these bodies don't exist anymore but it didn't work out I keep seeing this these bodies there of course this thing is not only for me it's for everybody in in Syria we also this kind of executions Oh