Fouad Elkoury is a traveller and a time recorder. What is remarkable is not the extensive travels through the Mediterranean belt in between wars and periods of tremor; it is the coolness with which he frames situations of potential horror. Fouad Elkoury’s work is real optimistic and despite his fascination and obsession with ruins he looks at a dead swimming pool with tenderness and a sense of real humor.  It carries the dandyism the world used to have, not the one of fancy imperial follies, but the one that really embraces the everyday life in its entirety.

Blues for the Orient, the group of photographs shown at Rodeo, is an assembly of a very small selection of Elkoury’s big body of work; in colour and black and white and travelling through places the show is borrowing its name from Yusef Lateef’s song. Works from Lebanon, Turkey, Italy and Djibouti, all places Fouad has either spent a lot of time in or has frequented in his travels. The list of locations is endless, we have made a specific selection of places here and hoping there will be more to follow.