Ruwan Teodros photographs what is about to disappear. Her practice is rooted in Beirut — a city of contradictions, of strength and fragility, presence and erasure — and in the conviction that the camera is an act of resistance. An insistence on memory. A way of saying: this was here.

She is drawn to the unnoticed. The way light catches on fractured glass. The fleeting tenderness between two people on a busy street. The stillness of an afternoon where nothing and everything is happening. Her work is not about spectacle. It is about preservation — about seeing what might otherwise be ignored or forgotten.

The August 4th, 2020 Beirut port explosion was a turning point. The scale of devastation was unfathomable: 218 lives lost, thousands wounded, homes reduced to rubble. In its aftermath, photography became her way of holding onto a city that felt like it was disappearing. She documented the quiet aftermath — not just the wreckage, but the way life persisted in its wake. These images are not only records of loss. They are records of endurance.

Her work is also deeply personal. She draws from her grandmother's life, her home, and the fragments of history passed down through her walls. In her grandmother's presence, time slows. Through her lens, Teodros honors these remnants — the echoes of past generations, the landscapes of memory that shape identity. In a time when Arab lives are so often reduced to statistics, she turns her focus toward the intimately familiar. Her photographs are love letters to Lebanon — and acts of defiance.