Phantom Home
Ahlam Shibli
Hatje Cantz
Essay by Esmail Nashif
Softcover
200 pages
220 × 310 mm
2013
ISBN 9783775735766
This publication reproduces the sixty-eight images from Ahlam Shibli’s most recent series, Death. It explores the representations of Palestinians who lost their lives during the second intifada. Posters stuck to the walls of houses and shops, photos exhibited in family homes or displayed on mobile phones, and graves adorned with images and inscriptions assure the imaginary presence of the men and women whom Palestinian society honors as national heroes. Shibli’s photographs show how the living relate to the ever-present absence of the dead.
The book also includes a selection of images from Shibli’s other most important series such as Trauma, Trackers, and Goter, an essay by anthropologist Esmail Nashif discussing the positionality of death in Palestinian society since 1948, as well as a critical review of the oeuvre by TJ Demos.
About the Artist
Ahlam Shibli, born in 1970, in Palestine. Through a documentary aesthetics, her photographic work addresses the contradictory implications of the notion of home; it deals with the loss of home and the fight against that loss, but also with the restrictions and limitations that the idea of home imposes on individuals and communities marked by repressive identity politics.
ahlamshibli.com
About the Publisher
Hatje Cantz is a German book publisher specialising in photography, art, architecture and design. It was established in 1945 by Gerd Hatje and has offices in Stuttgart and Berlin. Hatje Cantz Verlag has a backlist of nearly 800 titles.
hatjecantz.de
