Le bonheur tue is an artistic project born from the need to transform press photographs depicting different periods of Lebanon’s history. The double explosion at the Beirut port in 2020 rekindled the pain and anxiety of an entire nation, reviving the traumas of a country repeatedly scarred. The artist, having grown up trying to escape these “phantom images,” now seeks to reclaim them by coloring and manipulating these photographs in an attempt to better understand and exorcise the suffering of the past.

Through an approach that blends war photography with the aesthetic of images d’Épinal, the work questions the eternal recurrence of trauma, revealing recurring motifs such as flight, screams, and distress. Far from seeking spectacle, the artist selects images subjectively, allowing them to enter into dialogue and, through their universal dimension, become archetypes of human tragedy.

By using colorization and photomontage, multiple temporal and symbolic layers intertwine, confronting individual and collective memory. This project highlights the struggle to tame psychological pain and underscores the duality of the Lebanese people, torn between pride and self-destruction, in a country where beauty and chaos coexist.