RAMI GEORGE

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RAMI GEORGE

⁽⁰¹⁾

Untitled (family albums)

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These are your histories, your family albums. I found them hidden and water damaged in your basement, twenty years after. Lost memories, almost forgotten. Only a few of the pages seemed complete, a handful of others with a couple photos here and there, the rest empty. There are photos, and scratches of writings in fragments of English. I grabbed the pages that were complete.

After twenty years, this is the first I saw of these. I suppose we create these relics to remember, but you can’t seem to remember any of these moments. I can’t seem to remember these places either.

The people are laughing in the photos. Here’s one with four people sitting on a couch, one of them a child, perhaps you. They’re hugging and laughing and the light is streaming in through the blinds of the window. There are so many hands and feet and limbs. Flashes of flesh. Can you remember how it felt to stand on those rocks in that lake, your father holding you upright?

There are dates permanently burned onto the images. Seasons change in an instant. Images start to overlap. Onto you, onto pieces of your skin. Hands reach out to hold you tight, sturdy in their grip. Muscle as magic.

They say trauma passes through generations, that war can affect the children of those immediately affected. Was this true? Even wars far away can reach the skin here.

Here your father stares out at you. A gaze so direct, you see pieces of yourself in that stare.

And another family behind your own: a woman in a red dress, a child barely visible.

Here, dust and scratches become as prominent as the subjects. Pieces of hair and thread preserved as lovingly as the photos and notes. The spaces between the photos as precious as the objects themselves.

The cracks and tears in the images, they’re rather beautiful. Bodies start to overlap and spill. Your father’s hand continually reaches out. Your mother’s face, turned ever slightly. And, you know, I only just now noticed the colors of the clothing.

Here is your sister, and your brother there. Moments and gestures unclear but so precise they could be anyone’s.

⁽²⁴⁾Dog ⁽²³⁾Untitled (the ashram) ⁽²²⁾Untitled (mapping) ⁽²¹⁾Untitled (the wars in Lebanon) ⁽²⁰⁾List Projects 21: Rami George ⁽¹⁹⁾Untitled (with my father) ⁽¹⁸⁾brotherly love, sisterly affection ⁽¹⁷⁾Untitled (Donna Mae Stemmer) ⁽¹⁶⁾an ode to three ⁽¹⁵⁾Inherited Premises ⁽¹⁴⁾Untitled (the wars in Lebanon) ⁽¹³⁾let every pansy bloom ⁽¹²⁾tide/tithe ⁽¹¹⁾the mediterranean sea from the banks of lebanon, re: ali, krystel, nathalie, rasheed, visso, vrouyr ⁽¹⁰⁾virtually every site one can visit virtually: gaza strip ⁽⁰⁹⁾my mother and her sister always argued in arabic, i never understood what was said ⁽⁰⁸⁾Untitled (Saturday, October 16, 1993) ⁽⁰⁷⁾Untitled (footnotes) ⁽⁰⁶⁾Untitled (Beyrouth) ⁽⁰⁵⁾Untitled (Samaritan Foundation) ⁽⁰⁴⁾Untitled (Stanley, my second lover) ⁽⁰³⁾Untitled (two men, last scene) ⁽⁰²⁾Untitled (two men, last scene) ⁽⁰¹⁾Untitled (family albums)