In Beirut, a photographer’s frozen moments slow down time and allow the contemplation of destruction

In Beirut, a photographer’s frozen moments slow down time and allow the contemplation of destruction

We watch video after video, consuming the world on our handheld devices in bites of two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, 15. We turn to moving pictures — “film” — because it comes the closest to approximating the world that we see and experience. This is, after all, 2024, and video in our pocket — ours, others', everyone's — has become our birthright.

But sometimes — even in this era of live video always rolling, always recording, always capturing — sometimes the frozen moment can entrance the eye like nothing else. And in the process, it can tell a larger story that echoes long after the moment was captured. That's what happened this past week in Beirut, through the camera lens of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and the photographs he captured.

When Mr. Hussein set up his camera outside an evacuated Beirut apartment building Tuesday (October 22, 2024) after Israel announced it would be targeted as part of military operations against Hezbollah, he had one goal in mind — only one. "All I thought of," he says, “was photographing the missile while it was coming down.”

He found a safe spot. He ensured a good angle. He wasn't stressed, he said; like many photographers who work in such environments, he had been in situations like this one before. He was ready.

When the attack came — a bomb, not a missile in the end — Mr. Hussein swung into action. And, unsurprisingly for a professional who has been doing this work for two decades, he did exactly what he set out to do.

The sequence of images he made bursts with the explosive energy of its subject matter.

In one frame, the bomb hangs there, a weird and obtrusive interloper in the scene. It is not yet noticed by anyone around it, ready to bring its destruction to a building that, in moments, will no longer exist. The building's balconies, a split-second from nonexistence, are devoid of people as the bomb finds its mark.