“It is Abhorrent to Stage an Image” A Conversation with George Azar

Born in 1959, George Azar was the descendant of Lebanese olive farmers who had set sail from Beirut a century earlier. They settled in South Philadelphia, a working-class enclave—later immortalized in the ‘Rocky’ films. It contained a mix of Italians, Irish, Polish, Jewish, and Lebanese families, a tough, mafia-controlled neighborhood where people staked their claims street by street. There was an old man on his block nicknamed “Titanic” because he had survived the 1912 disaster by scrambling up from steerage into a lifeboat. Tales of migration, survival, and identity—woven into the fabric of his youth—shaped Azar’s worldview long before he ever picked up a camera.

After graduating from UC Berkeley in Political Science, he postponed graduate school to see  first-hand a war he had only read about. He covered the Lebanese Civil War as a front line news photographer, immersing himself in the conflict. In retrospect, he says, it was his South Philly upbringing—where kids carried weapons, race wars were common and identities were constantly in negotiation—that equipped him to navigate Beirut’s sectarian divides.

The war brought moments that could be scripted for an absurdist play, like the teenage Shia gunmen and snipers who called themselves “The Smurfs”. The dissonance between their youthful naïveté, and the brutal violence they lived mirrored the contradictions his photography sought to capture.

South Philly equipped Azar with more than just street smarts. He grew up in Philadelphia fight gyms. Boxing was a skill which served him well, not for throwing punches, but for knowing how to take them—and also, crucially, anticipating when they were coming. Those skills and instincts likewise served him in the unpredictable and brutal world of war photography.

Azar learned the unwritten rules of the new industry where the pictures most in demand were ‘Bang Bang’ photos: high-drama, front-line images that convey the raw violence of war.

His first photo, captioned Machine Gun Alley, marked his entry into the profession. A strong image from the front line sold for $60, while a photo of a woman firing a weapon might land on front pages worldwide. Some photographers gave in to the temptation to stage scenes. Azar found the practice indefensible. “To me, it is abhorrent to stage an image.” The power of photojournalism lies in its truth, he says—a principle he now imparts to his students at the American University of Beirut as missiles rain down on the city once again.

But the photographs Azar values most capture often quiet, deeply human moments: an elderly man weeping into his bed; a mother standing amidst the ruins of her Gaza kitchen; the Palestinian shepherd in a field of yellow wildflowers that graces the cover of his book, ‘Palestine, A Photographic Journey’ (UC Press, 1991).

Azar left Lebanon after the war, physically and emotionally drained. He returned to Philadelphia, and worked for the local newspaper. But the pull of the Middle East proved irresistible. The First Intifada drew him back, beginning a new chapter in his career, this time focused on the struggle for freedom in Palestine.

In the 1990s, he also documented the life of Arab-British boxing sensation Prince Naseem Hamed, merging his passions for storytelling, boxing and the complexities of Arab identity.

In conversation, Azar shared astonishing stories: the Irish junkies linked to the IRA who lived

above him; Issa Abdullah Ali, a renegade African-American soldier who converted to Islam, defected and joined Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and fought the Israelis in the 1982 battle for Beirut; and his encounters with legends of journalism Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn and photojournalist Don McCullin.

Our conversation unfolded against a backdrop of Israeli drone sounds, power outages, and rising tensions—all grim reminders that Lebanon is once again in the grip of war.

The country faces yet another reshaping, one that will demand extraordinary resilience from its people and, perhaps, a reimagined political future.

 

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