Le bonheur tue (Happiness kills)
On August 4, 2020, the double explosion that occurred in the port of Beirut shook Lebanon and the Lebanese diaspora, reviving anxiety and pain in everyone about being Lebanese. What to do? How to cope with such a tragedy? Happiness Kills was born out of the need to transform press photographs depicting Lebanon at various points in its history to create a dialogue between the past and the present.
My parents are almost the same age as Lebanon, a country regularly shaken, traumatized, and ravaged. Many Lebanese tragically lost at least one family member during the successive wars in Lebanon. For years, I have been hand-coloring my family photos to preserve the joyful memory of a lost paradise. I now wish to reveal the hidden side through a contrasting representation of a schizophrenic country, filled with images of chaos that recur over time almost identically, like a leitmotif, symptomatic of the country’s morbid dysfunction.
I have spent my life fleeing the haunting images that I now seek to reclaim. There comes a time when perpetually open wounds summon the sufferings of the past to exorcise those of the present. If not tamed, the psychological pain enclosed in the continuous flow of war photos leads to hatred of others and oneself. It’s not surprising that many Lebanese oscillate between pride and self-loathing.
My approach involves combining idealized images of Lebanon with news photos depicting a trauma that shatters an idyllic reality. The trauma emerges from a subjective selection of photos, inevitably expressing my feelings. I intervene on these photos by adding color to them.
Sometimes I resort to photomontage to make multiple symbols and temporal layers interact within the same image. At other times, I add iconographic signs (re)connected to my inner self. My intervention varies depending on the photos. Spaced far apart in time, certain motifs (saving, aiming, running, fleeing, screaming, etc.) return with the startling similarity of “l’éternel retour d’un refoulé”. (the eternal return of the repressed)
For me, it’s not about selecting the harshest or most spectacular photos but those that, when combined, reveal the principle of trauma, capture human tranquility or distress in the simplest and most direct way. Through their universal dimension, like archetypes of the mad human tragedy, they become both contemporary and timeless.
Rima Samman is a French-Lebanese multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, actress, and producer. She lives and works in Paris. In 2020, she published a photo book titled L’amour Se Porte Autour Du Cou (Love Is Worn Like A Necklace). Photographic works from this series have been exhibited at Paris Photo, UNSEEN, MENART, and other photography and contemporary art festivals and fairs. In March 2025, her artist’s book Le Bonheur Tue (Happiness Kills) was published. It was shortlisted for the Author Photo Book Award at the Rencontres d’Arles 2025.
