During the Arab Spring, the Syrian Revolution—turned Civil War—was distinct from that of other countries due to the fact that journalists were absent from the scene of events. To understand what was transpiring, those outside of Syria had to engage with (moving) images made by Syrians and their government that were uploaded onto the Internet.
A Transmission Interrupted (2014)—a photographic series made from online depictions of one key figure—attempts to approach the limit of what can be understood from this material. It investigates the fragmented, conflicting representations of Abdul Razzaq Tlass, who was the leader of the Farouq Brigade—an armed rebel organization of the Free Syrian Army—until he was connected to a cybersex scandal propagated on YouTube.
Organized according to the upload date, and with images sized based on the number of views of each source video, A Transmission, Interrupted was motivated by my awareness of a paradox. On the one hand, outside observers have been presented with seemingly unprecedented visual access to the conflict through troves of online footage. On the other hand, the context, circumstances, and motivations surrounding each piece of media remain absent.
By reflecting on Tlass’s evolution in the public eye through the range of presentations of him, A Transmission Interrupted explores the construction of “truth” from a distance. At a time when the number of views matters more than what matters are being viewed, it ponders whether perception is derived from reality or whether reality is derived from perception.