Execution Squares

The series Execution Squares (2008) depicts public execution squares in three Syrian cities – Aleppo, Lattakia and Damascus. Taken in the early morning hours (the time the executions usually take place) the quiet images reveal a fragile paradox that exists between the beauty and constancy of the physical environment and the political and social realities that they obscure. Using photography as a tool to convince both himself and the audience, Sarkissian on the one hand demonstrates the continuing existence of these hanged corpses after they are taken away, and on the other hand he tries to erase them from memory by using the photographic medium as evidence that there are no bodies there.