like the delayed rays of a star, presented by Seaton Street Press

"like the delayed rays of a star" was produced on the occasion of Printed Matter + EXILE Books at NADA Miami—a four day presentation of artists' book publishers at the 19th edition of NADA Miami. Visit www.artistsbooksmiami.org to discover other programs, special online projects, exhibitor made videos, and more!

Seaton Street Press presents Heather M. O’Brien’s publication, "like the delayed rays of a star", as a conversation with the book’s contributors, Yasmine Nachabe Taan, Juli Carson, and Corinne May Botz. Together, the discussants respond to O’Brien’s book, which contemplates the role of the gaze in photography while attempting to pierce the propaganda surrounding US-centric perceptions of Beirut. The book, Like the delayed rays of a star, questions the misplaced anxieties of what it means to grow up in a post-9/11 image landscape, to live and work in Lebanon, and give birth to one’s first child in Beirut on August 4th—the same day as the catastrophic 2020 Beirut explosion. By documenting a confluence of “perfume, smoke, fruit, flowers, baking bread, and exhaust fumes,” the book aims to confront a conditioned culture of fear by elevating sun-drenched portraits from O’Brien’s domestic space, which is explored in each contributor’s role within the publication and conversation. In moments charged by Beirut's 2019 rebellion, economic collapse, the pandemic, and the most recent 2020 blast, this work seeks to resist narrative tropes of a western gaze by asking us, "will there ever be another way to see Beirut?”