In October 2010, Philipp Gallon set off on a trip to the Middle East. Instead of boarding a plane, however, he traveled over land to Istanbul,

Ankara, Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Amman, the West Bank, Suez, Cairo and Alexandria. Gallon came back with images of a region in the throes of

upheaval, not knowing that just one month after his return, what is in the meantime known as the »Arab Spring« would get underway in Tunisia.

With the help of a medium-format camera and a tripod, Gallon counters the shaky, out-of-focus mobile phone captures that have shaped the media image of recent events in the Middle East with pictures that look like scenes snatched from a cohesive narrative. A fleeting Before, or After. In-between pictures. They are about people, urban infrastructure, ordinary everydaythings. Things that can be found all over the world. Images that seem to search for common ground instead of differences.

Your will find No Place, art book on p. 36 in the Art Books Heidelberg, spring catalogue 2012 here!

Philipp Gallon, 1979 studied photography at the Folkwang Universität der Künste and the Högskolan för fotografi in Gothenburg, Sweden. He

lives and works in Stockholm.