Faces of Lebanon

Lebanon is a country of many faces. In the West, the name mostly brings up associations of war, occupation, and terror, and maybe a past golden age as the Paris of the Middle East.

In the Arab world, the associations are quite different. A phrase whose connotations I don't completely understand illustrates at least some of it. According to the BBC, a Baghdad drug addict said: "One type of tablet is called Lebanon - when I take it I see Lebanon. I've never been there, but it's in the tablet."

The mission of this gallery is to show the faces of Lebanon that I have encountered: very different, I think, from what you see in the news media (most often of the usual Arab-shaking-a-fist variety) or the Lebanese glossy magazines (usually of the Westernized-fashion-victim variety). These photos date from my trips to Lebanon between 1999 and 2003.