MoMA Learning

The 100 photographs that make up My Neck Is Thinner Than a Hair: Engines were taken at scenes where car bombs were detonated by various religious and political groups throughout the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). Often, the only part of the car that remained intact after the blast was the engine, and newspaper reports of car bombs consistently included photographs of engines and the police officers, politicians, and onlookers who gathered in the aftermath of the explosion.

Walid Raad found these images, taken by amateur and professional photographers, in newspaper archives in Lebanon. He presents them as documents of The Atlas Group archive, an organization with a mission to research and document the recent history of Lebanon. While The Atlas Group “started off as an imaginary foundation,” he explains, “as others sought to join it, it over time became a real foundation and a real project.”¹

Believing that the official histories of events in Lebanon failed to account for much of what people actually experienced, The Atlas Group embarked on a series of projects to re-present existing documents and produce new ones in the form of photography, video, multimedia presentations, and performances. In doing so, Raad examines the ways in which the economic, political, and social history of Lebanon has been recorded, recalled, and understood.