” […] However, the unphotographable characteristic of photographicity tells us that Gilbert Hage pays homage to all the resistant Lebanese people; he titles his series of tulips « The Earth Is Like a Child That Knows Poems by Heart », from a poem by the Austrian writer Rainer Maria Rilke. Celebration of life: photographing tulips becomes an act of resistance, because since the dawn of the second millennium – or since 1975, or perhaps we ought to say, since forever? –, Lebanon and the Lebanese people have gone through crisis after crisis, but always managed to rise again, just like these tulips that unfold their corolla and petals each year gracefully in a trance, in a purifying dance, the same way that Gilbert Hage unfolds the tulips in series and individually, but also in a format that he holds close to his heart, the Leporello, a series of supports attached in accordion, train, bridal veil, adapting wonderfully to the format of the series of tulips to which the Leporello breathes movement and life, making them dance in a well-choreographed nuptial ballet. A pristine white bridal celebration on a black background on smooth, untextured ULTRA SMOOTH 100% cotton paper. Gilbert Hage, a visual painter, manages to capture in a sculptural way, the modeling of the flower, the fine veins of the petals made diaphanous under the mask of black and white.

Gilbert Hage therefore works (and not for the first time) with flowers. Yes indeed, Gilbert Hage works « with »; with and for flowers, a metaphor of others that binds Hage to the world and forever seals his art and his view of the world to a militant act. The photographic act becomes a gesture of embrace, of communion with the world. The commitment of poets. Gilbert Hage: a photograph of time and existence. A photograph of the resistance. “

– Excerpt from Sophie Armache Jamoussi’s text.
Translated from French by Nadine Iskandar Baz.