TanyaHabjouqa

Tomorrow there will be apricots*
Five years in the lives of syrian women in Jordan (2012-2017) Tanya Habjouqa

The very stability Syria once knew was extracted at a heavy price. Dissent was not tolerated, neither speech nor association was free, and the notorious prisons of the Syrian regime were full of those who would object. “Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots” is born out of the current terrible moment, when even greater blackness has enveloped Syria.

As a photojournalist, I was often assigned to cover the spillover into Jordan of Syria’s disaster. But after each story was finished and filed, I still had endless material that was outside the scope of those assignments but needed to be shared and at the same time, needed a different kind of canvas to be more fully explored. After all, much of what defined these Syrians’ lives were the absences – of both people and places. But how do you photograph what isn’t there? To overcome such challenges, I worked collaboratively with the people I photographed for five years to create these performed portraits. This project is, therefore many things: study, investigation, documentary, reenactment, archive, rumination, and even séance, for those desperate to resurrect the dead or confront the past and its ghosts.

“Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots” tells this story through women using their bodies to perform their stories, actively occupying and speaking to their confinement. An emotive and investigati- ve narration told in three distinct chapters of the Syrian civil war. Blending metaphorical narratives into a synthesis of performed original poetry, intimate recordings and film diaries, moving and still imagery. An addendum section, entitled “Testimonies” addresses the stories of what happened to the absent men in their lives. These characters have been defined by men who are now absent from their lives, now reduced to images of the dead on mobile phones, TV screens, or escapist imagery on Bollywood films. Unique, intimate, sexual, horrific.