Currently on view at The Third Line in Dubai is The Lost Empire, Fouad Elkoury’s third solo show in Dubai. The works on display reveal the artist’s photographic journey through an abandoned Soviet military base.
For more than four decades Elkoury’s work has been associated with documentary photography with a special emphasis on the landscape and architecture that has been marred by human conflict. This body of work similarly displays the topography of war.
Here are portrayals of soviet military bases that Elkoury decided to document after he visited them in 2009. From then on he visited others in Poland, Hungary, Estonia and East Germany between 2010 and 2011. Many were aviation fields, while others served different purpsoes. He was told that there was nothing to photograph there. Even so, he found the abandoned aftermath of war captivating hence his current body of work.
What he saw had been invaded by nature – a force even stronger than human conflict. He photographs the silence and the emptiness that has been left behind – the abandoned stories that can never been told.
‘The Lost Empire’ is on at The Third Line until 29 May 2014. For more information, visit www.thethirdline.com
