Title: My neck is thinner than a hair
Attributed date: 2001
Attributed to: The Atlas Group
Production date: 2004

My neck is thinner than a hair is a research project by The Atlas Group about the uses of 3641 car bombs in the 1975-1990 Lebanese wars. 

​The only part that remains intact after a car bomb explodes is the engine. Landing on balconies, roofs or adjacent streets, the engine is projected tens and sometimes hundreds of meters away from the original site of the bomb. During the wars, photojournalists competed to be the first to find and photograph the engines.

The following are 49 of the 100s of photographs produced by photojournalists and found by Walid Raad in the archives of An-Nahar Research Center (Beirut, Lebanon) and The Arab Documentation Center (Beirut, Lebanon).

Title: I was overcome with a panic at the thought that they might be right
Attributed date: 1994
Attributed to: Nahia Hassan
Production date: 2005

Until her dismissal in 1994, Hassan was a senior topographer in the Lebanese Army’s Directorate of Geographic Affairs.  Her scaled model of all detonations in Beirut between 1975 and 1991 was presented to the Lebanese parliament’s committee on Development and Reconstruction in 1994 and ignited one of the most heated and contentious parliamentary sessions in Lebanon’s recent history. The debate led to an overhaul and suspension of all reconstruction activities then under way.

The model presented here is an exact replica of the original that was destroyed, some say vandalized, by parliamentarians in 1994.