Beirut Nocturne (Italian: Beirut notturna) by Giulio Rimondi was made in Beirut, Lebanon between autumn 2009 and spring 2010, tracing the city’s nocturnal, intimate life.
Set two decades after the end of the Lebanese Civil War, the project examines a city suspended between reconstruction and unresolved trauma. Against the backdrop of rapid redevelopment, stark inequality, and recurring civic unrest, Rimondi turns away from spectacle to consider memory, solitude, and life in the city’s less visible spaces. His Beirut is not the glamorous "Paris of the Middle East," but a fragile urban body where pre-war and post-war realities overlap and where the margins reveal the city’s social tensions.
Visually, the work unfolds in grainy black-and-white, with dense shadows and fleeting highlights carving out figures from an almost engulfing darkness. Tight framing and a preference for singular men and women, or small groups in moments of waiting, create scenes of suspended time: a guard lighting another cigarette, a family at a deserted bus station before dawn, solitary walkers on empty streets and rooftops. Night’s semi-darkness erases the visible frontiers between districts, allowing something of an older Beirut to surface. The mood is consistently quiet, melancholic, and dreamlike, as if the city were breathing in a slower, internal rhythm.
Technically speaking, Rimondi works with small, discreet 35 mm equipment and available light, embracing motion blur and high grain as part of an immediate, self-taught practice. He treats the snapshot as an alibi for immersion in other people’s lives rather than as a quest for formal perfection.
Reception of Beirut Nocturne positioned Rimondi as a young Italian photographer working in a humanistic, socially engaged mode. Exhibited in venues from Paris and Beirut to New York and at festivals including Cortona On The Move and PhotoMed, the project is also held in collections such as the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the Library of Congress, and the Historical Archive of the Venice Biennial.
