An Article by A. V. (789 words, 4 min. read)
At Jacaranda in Mar Mikhael, an unlikely poetry emerges. Not from paper. Not from a pen. But from bullets—deformed, discolored, forgotten—found by chance and turned into relics of reflection. Silent Impact: Narratives of Bullets, curated with sensitivity by Randa Sadaka in collaboration with Galerie Tanit, presents the haunting, transformative photography of Georges Yammine: a violinist, a wanderer, and above all, a witness.
From the Stage to the Soil: A Life in Harmony and Contrast
Georges Yammine’s life is steeped in music. As a professional violinist with the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra and co-author of Funkelnde Hoffnung with maestro Daniel Barenboim, he has long explored the power of music to bridge wounds. But this exhibition reveals another string to his bow: his lens.
Wandering through cities, deserts, and silent paths, Yammine bends down not to capture a note, but to collect a bullet. A stray shell casing. A piece of metal, once violent, now quiet. This habit began early, as a child in Lebanon during the civil war, when cartridge cases littered the streets like dead leaves. What others feared, he kept. Perhaps without understanding why.
Now, decades later, the why has found him.
Bullets as Jewels: Reframing Horror
In Silent Impact, bullets are no longer tools of death but subjects of contemplation. Through macro photography, Yammine transforms these fragments of war into sculptural artifacts. Each image glows—brass, gold, copper—captured like precious stones. It’s as if these relics, once fired in anger or celebration, have been summoned to stand still for a final portrait.
The photographs are not graphic. There is no gore, no blood, no battlefield. Yet every image throbs with the invisible residue of history. A bullet lodged in sand. A casing nestled among pebbles. The curves, scratches, and deformities suggest stories untold. Some of grief, of chance, others of someone who fired and someone who perhaps fell.
And yet: there is music.
Each photograph sings. Whether by composition or light, Yammine’s musicality permeates the frames. The bullets rise like notes in a sonata of silence, with pauses, crescendos, even fugues of forgotten time.
Curated with Reverence: The Hand of Randa Sadaka
The experience of Silent Impact owes much to the curatorial vision of Randa Sadaka. Her approach is not to exhibit violence, but to hold space for the viewer to pause and breathe. The bullets are never glorified; they are given their due, not as instruments, but as witnesses.
Sadaka allows Yammine’s vision to echo, balancing silence with suggestion, trauma with transcendence. Her collaboration with Galerie Tanit speaks to a shared desire: to bring emotion back into art, especially in a country where emotion has too often been suppressed by survival.
Collecting the Uncollectable: A Lifelong Ritual
What does it mean to collect bullets? Yammine’s habit of picking them up, from wherever he is (be it a battlefield or a peaceful walk) touches on something deeper. These objects are not trophies. They are questions. They are memories no one asked to have.
Some of these bullets may have been fired in weddings, others in war. The ambiguity matters. It allows us to reflect on the double meaning of the gun in Lebanese culture; one that celebrates, threatens, protects, and divides.
In the act of photographing them, Yammine gives these bullets a second life, this time with dignity.
Paths of Metal: A Sculpture of Possibility and Chaos
In the center of the exhibition stands a single sculpture—subtle, almost fragile—composed of countless thin wires shooting in all directions. Some rise gracefully; others twist, collide, or fall. It is made from the very material that bullets often accompany: metal. But instead of violence, this tangle speaks of choice, consequence, and the unpredictable trajectories of life. Yammine presents this sculpture as a metaphor for the infinite directions a single bulliet (or a single moment) can take us. Whether toward celebration or tragedy, transformation or loss, each wire carries the echo of a path chosen or imposed. It is not a violent object, but a contemplative one. A quiet reminder that behind every explosion, there is a story. And behind every bullet, a world that could have been.
Beauty From the Unbearable
Lebanon is a land of paradox. Pain and joy, horror and hope, always walk side by side. Yammine does not shy away from this. Instead, he lets his photography speak to it. In his lens, the bullet is no longer just a mark of violence, it is a mirror. Of a nation. Of memory. Of himself.
And somehow, it becomes beautiful. Not because war is beautiful, but because what we chooses to see, and how we chooses to frame it, holds the power to heal.
