Yes, I teach kids about art and photography, but some things simply are not the same on a screen. Art books, Costa coffee, cod and chips and deep-pan pizza among them.
What happens to a photograph after it disappears from a phone screen and becomes ink on paper? That question anchors the second edition of Fall for Print: Beirut Art Book Fair, opening on 20 November at Beirut Art Center for three days of independent publishing, photography and artistic exchange.
Organised by Myriam Atallah and Joseph Kesrouani, the fair gathers artists, independent publishers, printmaking studios and creative collectives from Southwest Asia, North Africa and the Global South. Visitors will find artist books, handmade publications, zines, prints, archival materials and experimental forms of publishing.
From First Edition to Second
The fair is young but has roots. Its inaugural edition ran 26-28 September 2025 under the public programme title Un/bind, framing publishing as “an act of liberation” intellectually, politically and materially. That first edition drew some thirty participants, including Kaph Books, Kayfa Ta, the Arab Image Foundation and Journal Safar.
The venue carries its own history. Beirut Art Center opened in 2009 in Jisr el Wati, an industrial quarter on the banks of the Beirut River, and relocated in 2019 to a converted warehouse in the same neighbourhood.
The Newspaper at the Centre
A special production with Wide Open Newspapers will serve as the fair’s centrepiece: a photo-only newspaper featuring photographers based in Lebanon, mixing analogue photography, digital images, found materials and archival fragments. It examines how digital images are copied, altered, degraded and reproduced in physical form – a question of direct consequence to anyone charting the photobook’s revival.
The View From The Beach
For artists working where political pressure, economic hardship or thin commercial infrastructure complicate publication, small presses and self-produced matter offer alternative routes for distributing ideas and preserving cultural memory. The fair puts readers in direct contact with the photographers, writers, printers and designers behind the work.
Alongside the exhibitions, the programme includes conversations, presentations, performances, book launches and discussions on independent publishing.
As the fair returns to Beirut Art Center for its second edition, it consolidates a modest but meaningful addition to the region’s publishing calendar – one where print is not nostalgia, but a working medium.
On a personal note, I love art books, and really miss handling, “reading” and savouring them. Along with Costa coffee, cod and chips and deep pan pizza, a price I happily pay to be here in The Gambia teaching little children, but boy, do I miss them!
And yes, I teach the kids about art and photography, but some things simply are not the same on a screen. Art books, Costa coffee, cod and chips and deep-pan pizza among them.
This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.
