Photography – Mahmoud dabdoub: colors are there for everyone

In view of the title of your current exhibition, an obvious question arises: Do you see yourself as an artist – or rather as a documentarist?

If you emphasize that you are an artist, it quickly sounds a bit arrogant. I have never called myself an artist myself. Nevertheless, I try not only to make my pictures emotionally, but also artistically. After all, I was once a student of the art college. But later also press photographer for various newspapers. So I probably move somewhere in between.

The oldest photos of her exhibition come from Lebanon in the early 80s. How did you get photography there?

At first I painted and drawn. The utensils that were needed were significantly cheaper than those of photography. But it has already trained my view of pictures. Life in the refugee camp was absolutely bleak. I then started painting beautiful, colored pictures that I didn’t know from reality. Back then I thought it was only available in rich areas.

And then?

Later I worked for a photographer during the summer vacation. I was very interested in what he did, so one day I asked him if he could borrow his camera for me. That was my first experience as a photographer. Shortly afterwards I went to West Germany as a auxiliary worker. With the money earned there, I bought my own camera.

They only remained brief in West Germany – after nine months they had to go back to Lebanon.

Exactly. There I started working at the Palestinian Artists’ Association in Beirut. In that time I was able to take a lot of photography and worked with many important artists, for example with the painter Ismail Shamout, who was then general secretary of the artist association, and his wife Al Akhal Shamout, both of whom both promoted me very much. That was something special for me: when you go to a museum and look at pictures of Dürer or Picasso, you always keep a distance from the object. It was different in the context of work in the artist association, because I spoke and interacted with the artists there – and packed and worn their works.

In 1981 they finally received a scholarship for the University of Graphics and Book Art – HGB in short – in Leipzig, where they were able to take up their studies in photography. How did it come about?

At that time, the Palestinian Association had good relationships with the GDR artists’ association, which is certainly also part of solidarity with the Palestinian people. This was practiced less in military, but more in mental terms. In the course of this, four to five study places were awarded to Palestinian refugees every year. Shammout asked me: “Boy, do you want to study?” Of course I wanted. This may also have saved my life: just a year later, 1982, the massacre in the two refugee camps of Sabra and Schatila (committed by maronitical-Catholic militia tons; ed.). I had lived in the latter before.

Was it a conscious decision back then to go to the GDR?

No. I would have loved to go to the Federal Republic as well. But there were no scholarships for people like me at the time.

How did you experience the country back then?

I was particularly grateful. I didn’t come here to get around. I saw myself as a guest. In Lebanon I learned that as a guest you have to respect your guest law. That was important to me. The current view of the GDR, which is strongly shaped by aspects such as lack of economy, decaying architecture or a lack of democracy, did not matter for me at the time. I did not come to condemn, but to study and then return to my home. It was a very educational time for me.

To what extent?

When I was in Beirut, I didn’t know western photographers. At the HGB I got to know various schools and its most important representatives. I was particularly fascinated by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson …

… A French photographer and central pioneer of street photography.

Exactly. I love his photographs, whose humanistic impetus can hardly be overlooked when viewing. He succeeded in capturing bizarre and weird moments and thus not expressing humanity through an instructive, but by a sometimes humorous way. That shaped me and my later work very much.

As with Cartier-Bresson, the center of her photography is mostly simple. Where does your interest in you come from?

From humanity. Above all, I often photographed children. I was fascinated by the carefree. They don’t think: what kind of terrible environment in which we live? They sit in the dirt, in the trash and laugh. These moments of joy infected me. Although or precisely because it was so depressing for us adults.

»I photographed with my heart, «they said once. What do you mean?

By that I mean to feel what I take pictures. Many of my early photos from Lebanon are overexposed or underexposed. But the technology was never in the foreground of my work. I walked through the alleys in which old people sat and played children, drove and snapped. It was important for me to respect the people I photograph.

In Lebanon, as a Palestinian refugee, they were just as part of a social minority as later as a migrant in the GDR. To what extent is this foreign experience reflected in your photographic work?

Both shaped me a lot. Especially the experience in Lebanon. I wanted to document the situation there, the people and their dignity and the western world at the same time show that this is not a way to live. Strangeness as experience helps to get involved and solidarize. And also in the process of changing the perspective.

Many of their photographs seem in love with detail, although a high degree of spontaneity is also reflected. How do you keep the balance?

I rely on what I find. I don’t give an example, I wait for the right moment and press. The staging takes place at most so that you choose a certain excerpt and decide to include motifs into the photo.

How did the change from analog to digital photography change your photographic practice?

I initially resisted the change towards digital photography. At some point it said on the part of a client that only files were accepted. However, photographic practice has remained more or less the same. Only the tool has changed. And the comfort is significantly higher today: I used to have to carry my own suitcase with new films with me when traveling. Today a small chip is enough. And I no longer have to choose between black and white and color photography, but can retrospectively adapt images to the respective ideas.

You once said that you do not consider your work to be political. Are you so sure? Isn’t the decision for or against a photo object already a political decision?

Above all, I mean that I don’t act as a politician or activist. As an artist, of course, you are always part of a political context, and this always affects one or the other of your own art. But I am more concerned with bringing reality on the streets to the public and showing what really is. I have no influence on what political conclusions are drawn from it.

That means you do not pursue an activist, but an enlightening claim?

Exactly. I want to keep the conscience of the people who see my photos.

Mahmoud dabdoub “The street is my studio”, contemporary historical forum Leipzig, until June 22nd.