Lebanese photographer Randa Mirza has been awarded the prestigious Prix Camera Clara 2025 for her powerful series "Atlal (Ruins)," which documents the devastated villages of southern Lebanon. The collection, captured between August and December 2024 using a large-format camera, will be on display at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) François Mitterrand site in Paris until March 29, 2026. The exhibition is part of "La photographie à tout prix, une année de prix photographiques à la BnF," a year-long celebration of photographic achievements. Mirza's work focuses on the destruction wrought by Israeli military bombardments during the final months of 2024, presenting a haunting visual record that transcends mere documentation and enters the realm of fine art.
The title "Atlal," meaning "ruins" in Arabic, deliberately invokes a foundational tradition in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, where poets would begin their verses by reflecting on the remnants of abandoned campsites. Guillaume Piens, president of the Prix Camera Clara jury, articulated the panel's decision in a written statement: "We were seized by the poignant images of ruined cities in southern Lebanon, created with a large-format camera by Randa Mirza in 2024. These images of ruins possess tremendous plastic force that carries them beyond documentary photography. They become a theater of memory, an act of denunciation and reparation in the face of war's destructive tragedy." According to Piens, the jury was particularly moved by how Mirza's work elevates the subject matter into a profound artistic statement about loss and resilience.
In this series, Mirza represents the bombed villages as more than just physical wreckage; they become symbolic landscapes loaded with cultural meaning. The atlal serve as piles of stones and open wounds in the terrain, underscoring both human cruelty and war's ravages. However, the concept also embodies themes of nostalgia for lost love, perpetual change, departure, and separation—themes that have resonated throughout Arabic literary history for centuries. Mirza's work echoes the ancient poem by Antar ibn Shaddad, which asks, "Have the poets left any place to settle? Have you recognized the imagined dwelling?" More recently, these same motifs appear in verses by Egyptian poet Ibrahim Nagi, famously sung by legendary vocalist Oum Kalthoum in 1966, connecting contemporary devastation to a long cultural lineage of artistic reflection on ruins.
The artist's approach builds upon a theoretical distinction made by mid-twentieth-century art historian H.W. Janson, who differentiated between the "ruin" as a well-composed window into the past and "debris" as a shapeless mass of rubble. Mirza observes that the destroyed houses in southern Lebanon have been reduced beyond ruins to meaningless materials destined for removal and erasure. Through her photography, she seeks to restore these vestiges with presence and reestablish historical continuity against the rupturing machine of war. Her large-format Crown Graflex 4x5 camera requires extensive setup and manipulation before each exposure, a deliberate process that mirrors the ancestral tradition of composing poetry before ruins, forcing both artist and viewer to confront the scene with intention and reflection rather than passive observation.
This technical methodology is central to the work's impact and conceptual depth. The cumbersome nature of the large-format camera demands patience and precision, creating a ritualistic approach to image-making that stands in stark contrast to the instantaneous destruction it records. Each photograph becomes a carefully constructed meditation rather than a fleeting capture, with the slow process allowing for a deeper engagement with the subject. The act of photography itself becomes a form of resistance against the erasure of memory, as Mirza invests time and care into documenting what war has reduced to disposable rubble. This approach transforms the photographic process into a performance of remembrance and a claim for historical continuity in the face of systematic destruction.
The exhibition at the BnF's François Mitterrand location offers visitors a chance to engage with these monumental works in a setting dedicated to preserving cultural memory. As part of the library's year-long photography prize program, "Atlal (Ruins)" stands as a testament to photography's capacity to serve as both artistic expression and social witness. Mirza's work challenges viewers to look beyond the surface of destruction and consider the deeper implications of cultural erasure, historical continuity, and the role of art in processing collective trauma. The series not only documents a specific moment of devastation but also participates in an ancient tradition of using ruins as a starting point for reflection on loss, memory, and the enduring human condition.
