Thursday, August 7, 2014

Destroyed MEA planes as art inspiration

Soon there will an auction in Doha which which include interesting Middle Eastern art, Ayman Baalbaki will feature among the lot with a work entitled Al Sharq Al Awsat (which means "Middle East" - but also refers to our national carrier Middle East Airlines).
Here is the work in question courtesy of Sotheby's:
Ayman Baalbaki, Al Sharq Al Awsat
As soon as I saw the work I remembered it was based on an actual photo, from the 1982 destruction of the Beirut International Airport. Sadly I have no credit for the photo as to who took it but here it is nonetheless:
And just in case you are interested, here's a different view of a plane that suffered the same fate (from the same era and time):
The same infamous photo appeared as an inspiration to the airport scene in Waltz With Bashir (director Ari Folman)
Still from Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman)
 It is good to know that destroyed planes actually ended up being an inspiration to artistic works.

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