A child running through the street, an older person’s hand, a family gathered around a birthday cake. These are some of the things that draw Lebanese photographer and Latent Studios founder Habib Saleh’s attention. Looking through his ongoing project, To Pray Is to Wander About the Meaning of Life, you begin to recognise the questions connecting them: how do we notice ourselves changing? What do we really know about our parents? And what happens when the place we call home starts becoming unfamiliar?

Bringing together photography, writing and family photos, the project grew out of walks Saleh began taking during a difficult period in his life. After working in fashion photography, moving to Beirut and surviving the port explosion, he picked up his camera without a particular story in mind. He was simply photographing “things”. Gradually, those images became separate projects, then parts of a larger project.

The book unfolds across five parts: Colored Air, What Light Knows About Us, Before It Disappears, Where Language Falters and After the Weather. Together, they trace how Saleh’s world — and his relationship to it — has changed.

“Three years ago, I felt fragmented. Now I feel more coherent, and my work is becoming more coherent too,” Habib says. We began by asking how he first picked up a camera — long before he realised what he wanted to say with it.

— Habib, let’s start with your life before photography. What were you doing, and when did you first pick up a camera?

— I actually started with computer science. As a kid, I loved computers, the internet and everything related to technology. I studied computer science at university for two years. Photography wasn’t on my mind at all — I didn’t even know I liked it, let alone that I might be good at it.

I remember taking my first real photo. A local painter had painted a bench, and a Facebook page announced a competition: whoever took the best picture of it would win $100. Everyone in the village took part, and I won. I had never really done photography before, so my photographic ego suddenly became enormous.

— What do you think made that photo special?

— I have no idea, but I think I just did it differently. Everyone photographed the bench itself, but I focused on a leaf lying on it — this one little detail. And the painter liked it!

— So everything started with this contest?

— Almost. Afterwards, I went through what I would call my first conscious existential crisis. I was studying computer science but losing interest because I wanted to take more pictures. I think Instagram had just launched, and the iPhone 4 had come out. A family member living abroad got me one, and I started going for walks, photographing flowers and whatever caught my eye. I fell in love with photography.

Then I became interested in portraits and eventually moved into fashion photography, which I did until around 2020.

At that time, I had moved from my village to Beirut, and the rhythm of the city overwhelmed me. Even though I was working in art and photography, I didn’t feel I belonged in that fast-paced life. It was the first time I really experienced anxiety and began questioning what I was doing with my life.

Then came the explosion, the economic crisis and everything that followed.

I was trying to survive, and I think that made me look for beauty and ways to express myself. I told myself: I am just going to pick up the camera again. The way I saw the world was changing, and I wondered whether my photographs would change too. I started going for walks and taking pictures. I wasn’t planning a project — I was just photographing things.

I started writing as well. Sometimes I was satisfied with an image, but there was still something I wanted to say that wasn’t in it. I enjoyed taking a picture and writing something to accompany it.

— I read that your home and studio were destroyed in the Beirut explosion.

— I lived about five minutes from the port. Some of my neighbours died that day. I think the explosion shaped the way I later started documenting things.

When it happened, I went outside and saw what the world looked like. My first thought was: I have a camera. I found it, turned it on, and it worked. I ran downstairs into the street. It had probably been two minutes since the explosion, and people were looking at me like, who is this guy taking pictures right now?

It was a catastrophic event. I hadn’t chosen to be there, but I was there; I had a camera, and I took pictures.

— How did it affect you emotionally?

— At first, I didn’t feel much. About a year later, I began experiencing symptoms, including psychosomatic ones, but immediately afterwards, I didn’t really process it emotionally. I barely wrote about it and could talk about it as just one of many things that had happened in my life.

That felt strange. Maybe my brain romanticised it somehow. I don’t know. It wasn’t fine, but I think I was satisfied with how my brain handled it.

— Habib, thank you for sharing that. While finding your approach to photography and photographing things, you realised it was all part of a larger body of work and created a book. At what point did that happen?

— It started when a friend of mine suggested I apply to the VII Foundation’s Level One storytelling workshop. I had never done anything like that before, but I thought, okay, let me try — and I was accepted.

The workshop helped me take this work more seriously and understand how photos could come together to tell a story. That was the missing link: I had so many pictures, but nothing coherent connecting them. My first project was Coloured Air, which is also where my book begins.

From there, I began developing bodies of work rather than thinking only about individual images. Eventually, I had four projects, but when I looked at them together, I started questioning why I was treating them as separate. They felt like parts of the same story, and I realised they were all one ongoing project: my life over the last four years.

You can see how the pictures have changed, even how the titles have changed. I am still working on it, and I think its evolution reflects something happening inside me, too. Three years ago, I felt fragmented. Now I feel more coherent, and my work is becoming more coherent too.

— Looking through all five parts of the book, I noticed that you often focus on hands. Is that a conscious choice?

— The thing is that I don't like posing in photographs. I prefer photographing people in motion, and hands are one way to capture that. Maybe it also has something to do with being from the Middle East — we use our hands so much when we talk.

I am also drawn to people running, especially children. There is something about that urge to run: whether they are happy, shy or feeling something else, they just run.

Older people tend to be more still, so my attention shifts to smaller details — a hand, a face. With children, there is always movement.

— And what about older people? Do you find a particular kind of beauty in old age?

— If you look at my photos, you will notice very few people between 20 and 50. I relate more to children and older people, perhaps because both extremes exist inside me. Sometimes I am a child doing childish, stupid things; other times, I am a grumpy old man who just wants to sit at home. I think that comes through in my work, where something very old and something very young often share the same frame.

— You mentioned that part of the book is connected to your family and your village. Can you tell me more about it?

— I wanted to explore how my village was disappearing — that strange moment when a place hasn’t vanished but is already becoming something else. That became What the Light Knows About Us, an introduction to the village as I remember it and the way it is changing.

For me, that transition is a little like growing up. You remember being a child, and you know you are an adult, but you don’t really remember becoming one. You look in the mirror every day without noticing yourself changing, and suddenly you are grown up, wondering how you got there. Your childhood almost feels as though it belonged to someone else.

I think something similar happens to a village. It changes without anyone noticing, even the people who live there. Some places are still called by their old names, although they have become something completely different.

In our house, for example, there is a room everyone still calls Haji Fatima’s room. She was, I think, my grandmother’s mother. She died many years ago, and many other people have slept there since. Now it is a guest room. The house has changed so much, but the name remains.

I find that fascinating. We are a little like the village or the house: we change, but we don’t completely disappear. Something lingers: names, memories. That is what I wanted to explore in this chapter.

— You also include old family photos in the book. Why?

— Because I think photos say much more about us than just what we see inside the frame. What you are thinking, feeling and living through influences why you press the shutter at a particular moment.

At least that is how it works for me. My work is poetic in some way. Even when I photograph a landscape, it is not just about the landscape. There is always something bittersweet about it, because life is bittersweet.

When I look at photos from my childhood or pictures of my family, I think about the lives and experiences behind them. Those feelings can be difficult to explain in words. That is why I use photography, colours and writing together — I need different ways to express them.

— At the start of our conversation, you were talking to your mum about going for a walk together. You seem very close to your parents! But my question about something else: did looking through old family photographs help you see them in a different light?

— Definitely. You realise they weren’t always the people you know today. They were young, had their own interests and things they wanted to do. You begin to see different periods of their lives.

In Lebanon, there is another layer to that. History keeps repeating itself, and my parents went through many of the same things I have experienced: war, displacement, instability.

My mother is originally from Beirut, but during the civil war, her family fled to the village. That is how my parents met. They had to leave places and deal with things beyond their control, just as I later did.

Parents don’t always tell you about their past. But looking at photos helps me imagine those parts of their lives and recognise the connections between us. I am a very visual person, so an image helps me understand things they might never have put into words.

I think that is part of why our relationship has improved. I understand them better now, and I have learned how to navigate our differences.