rudygodinez:

Walead Beshty, Travel Pictures, (2006)

 In 2001, Walead Beshty happened upon a short article in a German newspaper about the Iraqi diplomatic mission located in former East Berlin. Due to shifting political regimes, it is now a space occupied by countries whose sovereignty is either defunct or in question. Abandoned for over ten years, this embassy turned squatter’s haven now offers only glimpses of its past life of ambassadors and dignitaries. Beshty traveled to the mission repeatedly, collecting photographs, speaking to former Iraqi officials, and even taking up residence for a short period.


 Beshty’s work explores not only the history of photography, but also the way in which photography shapes our understanding of history. He makes this enduring relationship visible by bringing together images of ambiguous places, altering them, and exhibiting them as documentation. Beshty invites the viewer into a surrogate of a place that, though real, by legal definition does not exist. This tenuous link between what is authentic and what is reproduced parallels the medium of photography itself, which captures moments in time that our eyes are trained to believe truly occurred. Beshty’s work offers us a chance to experience the sense of uncertainty that this place engenders, lying unsteadily on a line between past and present, fact and fiction, day and night.