‘Through war and disillusion, how can Lebanon still be home?’
Photographer Ghaleb Cabbabé captures the changing landscape of his home country through the fragile beauty of daily life
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In the work of Ghaleb Cabbabé, the ordinary and the profound exist side by side. Born in Beirut in 1978 during the Lebanese civil war, Cabbabé now lives in France but directs his lens towards the emotional and physical landscape of his changing home country.
How Can It Still Be Home? is a project more than five years in the making, shot on film while visiting his parents in the mountains as he set out to explore his relationship to Lebanon.
Cabbabé captures the fragile beauty of daily life — a fruit bowl, a rose in a vase. In one photo, his parents sit together in a car, his father’s head bandaged after eye surgery. The image prompts Cabbabé to reflect on ageing and the difficulty of saying goodbye, having lived abroad for more than 20 years.
Cabbabé’s central question, “through war and disillusion, how can Lebanon still be home?”, lingers throughout the images. Over the past five years, the country has endured ongoing economic hardship, political collapse and more recently, Israeli bombardments causing further devastation. In this context, Cabbabé’s work remains deeply personal, yet marked by the weight of loss.
His images do not attempt to resolve these tensions. Instead, they dwell on them, asking what can be returned to, what is left behind and what it means to call a place home.
When asked if Cabbabé has plans to go back to Lebanon, he says: “I don’t live with the mindset that Lebanon is behind me. I’m just away for now. Returning is always on my mind.”
How Can It Still Be Home? is published by Kehrer Verlag and will feature in an exhibition at Photo London 2025, 15-18 May.
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