Some photobooks are detailed by their direct exercises in story building. In contrast, others ask that the viewer read them holistically as an environment, a stage in which ideas are distributed, but with fewer absolutes regarding their nature. Hints are dropped, and some images carry the conceptual load of what the press release suggests as a way to read such a book. The photobooks that I am most interested in 2024 are books that allow a reader to gather clues and read the terrain of imagery in their sequencing but are not books that force-feed how I should interpret the work. This is because I need to be able to walk into the world that the artist has created and to commune with them over their images. A certain amount of permissible reading must occur, or it is not a conversation but a monolog. Frankly, if I wanted to be talked to, and not with, I would read non-fiction books (I do, actually) and flex a different mental muscle.

What is excellent about photobooks and why they have become an important medium is that they allow two minds to meet within the book’s reading, no matter how forced the narrative. The world-building experience of a book is particularly appealing in 2024, as we do not have to believe the images per se but are allowed to weave our thoughts and understanding of them in multiple. We do not have to ask a single image to bear the load of veracity as, by association, we can condition our responses with several angular possibilities in mind that are allowed to develop as much from what is on the page as what is between them. There is also the tactility and approximation to our eyes and how we might read work in a book different from that on a wall, alone and with time to our advantage. Repeated readings also allow us to see previously unseen things and return to the world within the pages often.

In the case of Orianne Ciantar Olive’s recent book Les Ruines Circulaires, published by Dunes Editions, the world-building that the artist has facilitated, in my reading oscillates between tropes of photojournalism and cinema. The book is comprised of color and black-and-white photographs. It is a mediation about contemporary Lebanon, with a sci-fi element used in the dare-I-say cinematography that reads futuristic. This is relegated to the color images mainly that present with an orange cast, likely the use of a filter, but simulate an alien-esque landscape much in the mood of Blade Runner 2049 and some of Denis Villeneauve’s other film treatments. This is particularly evident in several scenes that showcase Ryan Gosling’s character as he approaches the cityscape to meet Deckard. It is apocalyptic and Cintar Olive’s treatment of Nabil, her anadrome of Liban, or the French word for Lebanon. It suggests an alternate timeline or reality in which to view the country. All of this was sculpted before the current invasion of Lebanon by Israel, with its incredulous mass bombings of that country. The use of repetition in the final sequence of the bloody/eggy images of the sun also feels bombastic. I remember images from 9/11 from the street view that are also triggered when I see these images. Everything is hazy, distorted, and also arcane.

The black and white photographs in the book feel like glimpses of Lebanon in passing. It adds a movement to the pictures that resemble war photography or photojournalism. I keep returning to Gilles Peress Telex Iran when I think of the images. It is a compelling atmosphere between these two worlds of struggle and fantasy. This is aided in considerable measure by the use of gatefold pages that open up the world to be read in a wide-screen simulation of the work. With this, there is also a very bleak and sorrowful text both in French and English that transmits, almost like a script, as it reads very much like a meditation on the images, but in a lyrical fashion, a synthesis that makes all elements technical and visual in-sync and complete. There is also the de-bossed text that adds tactility to the cover, and every step of the process has been through between the artist, designer, and publisher to make a holistic object that reads between the worlds of sci-fi, contemporary reportage, and cinematography.

In summary, this is a fascinating book that asks the viewer to navigate through the perilous world of the contemporary Middle East but asks the reader to do so through the lens of possibility, of a future, and with this is implicit and no prescient anxiety regarding genuine political matters. In reading this post from the future, I hope that readers seeking more information will look to when the book was produced and unlock the realities of Lebanon in late 2024. It is an incredible book that successfully mixes several, on the outside, competing elements to draught a world out of order in which visionary claims to the present are examined through the realms of the possible. You do not need to be into photojournalism, cinema, or cinematography to understand the implicit pressure in the book—highest Recommendation.