After the Last Sky
Palestinian Lives
Said's text set against Jean Mohr's photographs, on exile and on being the subject of other people's pictures.
Edward Said’s text set against Jean Mohr’s photographs of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and the diaspora. Said refuses the conventions of both photojournalism and national narrative: the pictures resist being read as evidence, and his commentary circles questions of exile, interiority and the impossibility of telling the story straight. The title comes from a line of Mahmoud Darwish. First published in 1986.
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Raja Shehadeh
The full line is: ‘Where should we go after the last frontiers, where should the birds fly after the last sky?’ It’s very evocative. At the end, Said writes: ‘I would like to think that we are not just the people seen or looked at in these photographs: we are also looking at ourselves.’ He wants to distance himself from those who see the Palestinians as passive or as mere objects to be scrutinised.
Interview · February 2011
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