Fouad Elkoury is a Lebanese photographer, filmmaker and writer. Born in Paris in 1952, he obtained an architecture degree in London before turning towards photography, documenting the lives of people during the Lebanese conflict in what became the Civil War Series. In 1989, he was the recipient of the Prix Medicis Hors les Murs and spent a year in Egypt. In 1991, he participated in the Beirut City Centre Photographic Mission organised by writer Dominique Eddé. In 1997, he co-founded the Arab Image Foundation with Akram Zaatari and Samer Mohdad. In 2000 his work was showcased in a major retrospective at Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris. Elkoury was among the artists selected for the first national participation of Lebanon at the 2007 Venice Art Biennale.

Fouad Elkoury is hailed for being one of the first practitioners who succeeded in making documentary photography a sought-after collectible work of art.

This dramatic image discloses the interior of Cinema Opera, located in Martyrs’ Square in Beirut, in its state of destruction after 15 years of conflict and before its reconstruction as the Virgin Megastore. It is part of the body of work entitled Traces of War. As Gregory Buchakjian writes, “produced between 1993 and 1997, Traces of War could be considered as a natural continuation of Beirut City Centre in the sense that it is located mainly (though not exclusively) on the same devastated geographic terrain. With respect to its production, Traces of War was the result of a personal initiative rather than a commission. Every day, the photographer went to the Center of Beirut, by then a vast construction site, without anyone asking him to do so.”