The Arab Image Foundation (AIF) in Beirut aims to explore the act of collecting through the eyes of Mohsen Yammine, a Lebanese man who found himself compiling through the years a large collection of photographs from Tripoli and northern Lebanon. This collection has been central to the Arab Image Foundation s quest to understand photographs as surviving objects, not only regarding the cult to the past, the origins, the identity and the memory they bear, but also considering their use as exchange material and for the future. An Uncanny Impulse, co-published with Casa Arabe to mark its tenth anniversary, explores Mohsen Yammine s remarkable archive and underlines the key role played by the Arab Image Foundation during its 20 years of existence, as a crossover between archival practices and contemporary photographic practises.
