A photographer, HRAIR SARKISSIAN (Syria, 1973) graduated in photography from Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. His work aims to tell stories that are invisible or inaccessible to official narratives. He exhibited in the biennials of Sharjah (2019), Bamako (2015) and Venice (2015) and has taken part in individual and collective exhibitions in institutions of the United States, Lebanon, Greece and Spain, among other countries.
The series EXECUTION SQUARES (2008) shows public execution squares in three Syrian cities: Aleppo, Lattakia and Damascus. The photos were shot early in the morning, when executions usually take place, revealing a fragile paradox between the quiet, peaceful and perennial spaces, and the turbulence of the political and social realities that inhabit them—and by which they are eclipsed. The photographs thus denounce the continuous and hidden presence of hanging bodies, while highlighting and stamping in the memory the evidence that, at the moment, there is no death in the square.
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