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Profile photograph by Geoffrey Berliner for the Guggenheim Fellowship Award, 2018
BIOGRAPHY Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984. Originally trained as an architect at the American University of Beirut and at Cornell University, she studied photography at the New England School of Photography and the Maine Photographic Workshops. Matar started teaching photography in 2009 and offered summer photography workshops to teenage girls in Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps with the assistance of non-governmental organizations. She now teaches Personal Documentary Photography, and Portrait and Identity at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and regularly offers talks, class visits and lectures at museums, galleries, schools and colleges in the US and abroad. In the winter/spring of 2017, she was an artist-in-residence at the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, through a Mellon Foundation Grant.
Matar’s work focuses on girls and women. As a Lebanese-born American woman and mother, her cultural background, cross-cultural experience, and personal narrative informs her photography. She has dedicated her work to exploring both sides of this identity: addressing issues of personal and collective identity, through photographs mining female adolescence and womanhood – both in the United States where she lives and the Middle East where she is from. Her work has won several awards, has been featured in numerous publications, and exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally. Her images are in the permanent collections of several museums worldwide.
Matar has published three books:• L’Enfant-Femme, 2016, with an introduction by Her Majesty Queen Noor, and essays by Lois Lowry and Kristen Gresh. Selected best photo book of 2016 by PDN Magazine and Foto Infinitum, and Staff Pick by the Christian Science Monitor.• A Girl and Her Room, 2012, essays by Anne Tucker and Susan Minot. Selected best photo book of 2012 by PDN, Photo-Eye, British Journal of Photography, Feature Shoot and L’Oeil de la Photographie.• Ordinary Lives, 2009, essay by Anthony Shadid. Selected a best photo book of 2009 by Photo-Eye.
Select Recent Honors, Grants and Awards
• Rania Matar has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, April 4, 2018.• YIELD Award Nomination, Snite Museum of Art Purchase Award, nominated by Barbara Tannenbaum, Curator of Photography, Cleveland Museum of Art• L’Enfant-Femme: Best Book of 2016 by PDN Magazine and Foto Infinitum, and Staff Pick by the Christian Science Monitor• Mellon Foundation Artist-in-Residence Grant, The Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, Spring 2017• Unspoken Conversations: Mothers and Daughters, Lens Culture Portrait Award finalist 2015• Nomination for the St. Botolph Foundation Distinguished Artist Award, 2015• Top 50 winner, Critical Mass, Photolucida 2015 (and 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007)• Nomination to Anonymous Was a Woman Award (AWAW), 2013 (and 2010)• A Girl and Her Room best book of 2012: Photo-Eye, PDN, Journal de la Photographie, Feature Shoot• The George Gund Foundation Annual Report 2011 Commission Award• Legacy Award 2011, Griffin Museum of Photography, awarded by Debra Klomp, Klompching Gallery NY• Recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship Award 2011 and 2007• First Prize “Off the Wall” 2011, Danforth Museum of Art, by Ms. Susan L. Stoops, curator of Contemporary Art, Worcester Art Museum• Runner-Up: L’Enfant-Femme, Silver Eye Center for Photography Fellowship Competition 2012, Juror’s Commendation Award, Juror: Ms. Julie Saul, Julie Saul Gallery NY• Finalist, The European Publishers Award for Photography 2011, juried by 5 European publishers: Actes Sud (France), Apeiron (Greece), Dewi Lewis Publishing (Great Britain), Kehrer Verlag (Germany) and Peliti Associati (Italy)• Winner Honorable Mention UNICEF Photo of the Year Award 2010, A Girl and her Room• People’s Choice Award A Girl and her Room, for finest photography in New England in 2010, New England Journal of Aesthetic Research• Winner Second Place, Prix de la Photographie Paris for Aftermath, 2010• Winner Third Place, Art of the Lebanese Diaspora Award, Beirut Lebanon 2010• Honorable Mention: CENTER Project Competition Award, 2010 A Girl and her Room• Honorable Mention: CENTER Curator’s Choice Award, 2010 A Girl and her Room• Winner First Place: Best Photo Essay the 2009 Ippies Award: Refugees: Aftermath of War in Lebanon published in Nueva Luz #13, by the New York Community Media Alliance• Finalist for the James and Audrey Foster Award, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, 2009• Honorable Mention, Santa Fe Center for Photography, Singular Image, 2009 (and 2006)• Top 100 Distinguished Women Photographers, Women in Photography International, 2008• Middle East Award Prize, Al Thani Photography Competition 2008• Honorable Mention, Berenice Abbott Prize for an Emerging Photographer, 2006, 2008• First Place, Women in Photography International, 2007• First and Purchase Prize: Danforth Museum of Art, New England Photographers Biennial, 2007• Finalist “Women to Watch 2007”, Massachusetts Chapter National Museum of Women in the Arts• Invitation to Moving Walls International, Open Society Institute, Soros Foundation, 2007
Select Recent Honors, Grants and Awards
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston TX• The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth TX• Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham MA• Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley MA• DeCordova Museum & Sculpture Park, Lincoln MA• Eskenazi Museum of Art, Bloomington IN• Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg MA• The Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, Gambier OH• The Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville FL• Kresge Art Museum, Lansing MI• Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg Germany• The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City MO• Portland Art Museum, Portland OR• The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL• Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach FL• Worcester Museum of Art, Worcester MA• The A.M. Qattan Foundation Collection• “The Art of War” Collection by Ms. Anne Wilkes Tucker• The George Gund Foundation Collection• The Girls’ Club Collection, Ft Lauderdale FL• Fidelity Investments, Boston MA• The Levant Foundation, Houston TX• Tufts University Permanent Art Collection, Medford MA• The Al Thani Private Collection, Qatar• The Samawi Private Collection, Dubai• Numerous private collections, including the Terrana Collection, Lucille and Richard Spagnuolo Collection, The Nancy and Rodney Gould Collection, John Cleary Estate, the Emir of Kuwait Collection, and more.
Nour #1, Beirut Lebanon, 2017
SHE: Now, Here and ThereAs a Lebanese-born American woman and mother, my ethnic background and cross-cultural experiences inform my art. I have dedicated my work to exploring issues of personal and collective identity through photographs of female adolescence and womanhood – both in the United States where I live and the Middle East where I am from – in an effort to focus on notions of identity and individuality, within the context of the underlying universality of these experiences.
I am interested in what it means to be a girl and a woman and how we make sense of a world that poses endless questions on girls and women of all backgrounds. In this work, I am focusing on young women – the ages of my own daughters – as they enter adulthood today and have to face a new reality they are often not prepared for, a humbling reality that is most often not as glamorous as the one portrayed on social media. I seek to portray the raw beauty of their age, their identity, their individuality, their universality, but also their vulnerability, their physicality, and how they confront the places where they live and the situations they find themselves in. I want to see beyond the ‘selfie’ attitude they might want to portray or the Instagram feed they have curated. I am photographing them, the way I, as a woman, a photographer, a mother, sees them, with no ‘filter’.
My work addresses the states of ‘Becoming’ – puberty, growing up, vulnerability, bodily fragility, body image, strength, imperfection, femininity – all in the context of the relationships to our specific physical environment and universal humanity. By making intimate portraits of women in the United States and in the Middle East – and while still looking to reveal the individuality of each woman who poses before me, I focus on our essence, our physicality and the commonalities that make us human – ultimately highlighting how female subjectivity develops in parallel forms across cultural lines.
Sophia #2, Arlington Massachusetts, 2017
Yara #1, Beirut Lebanon, 2018
Wafaa and Sanaa, Bourj El Barajneh Refugee Camp, Beirut Lebanon, 2017
Juliette #1, Beirut Lebanon, 2017
Installation shot . East Wing Gallery, Dubai UAE, 2015-2016
BecomingBecoming is the natural continuation of L’Enfant-Femme, a series of portraits of pre-teen girls and how they interact with the camera. My aim is to portray the girls’ sense of identity when allowed to pose themselves as they wish in front of the camera, and to capture alternatively the angst, the self-confidence or lack thereof, the body language, the sense of selfhood and the developing sense of sexuality and womanhood girls this age begin to experience. With the intent of keeping them away from the “selfie” poses that they are trained to perform for the camera, I only ask the girls not to smile and I allow them to fall into their own poses. As I am using medium format film camera, they cannot instantly see the photographs. Accustomed to the instant gratification of viewing themselves through digital photography, the girls experience the suspense of not knowing immediately how they will be represented and they take the photo session more seriously.
Over the past year, I started photographing again some of the girls I had photographed three years earlier – both in the United States and in the Middle East. While they ranged from 9 to 12 the first time I had photographed them, they were now 13 to 16 and they had transformed. It is touching and endearing to observe the changes in their bodies and in their attitudes, to simultaneously see the individuality of each girl as she develops her own identity, but also the universality of being a girl undergoing those natural transformations. Subtle changes in body language, hand gestures, feet positions and attitude are the focus of these photographs.
Lavinia at 11, Brookline Massachusetts, 2013
Lavinia at 13, Brookline Massachusetts, 2015
Christina at 10, Beirut Lebanon, 2012
Christina at 14, Beirut Lebanon, 2012
Installation Shot . Carroll and Sons Gallery, Boston MA, 2013
L’Enfant-FemmeL’Enfant-Femme are portraits of young teens and pre-teens and how they interact with the camera. The only instruction I give the girls is not to smile and I allow them to fall into their own poses. My aim is to portray the girl, when allowed to pose herself as she wishes in front of the camera. I try to capture alternatively the angst, the self-confidence or lack thereof, the body language, the sense of selfhood and the developing sense of sexuality and womanhood girls this age begin to experience.
For some, even though they are not smiling, one can see their sense of selfhood and their almost sensual pleasure in being photographed and in engaging the camera, while others are almost defiant in the way only teens can be, and others still are more separate from the camera, show more angst, are more self-conscious or look away. These are all emotions girls this age alternatively experience as they become aware of whom they are, of their changing bodies, their beauty, and their womanhood, but also of the world around them and the standards of beauty and attitudes they think they need to emulate. However, these are also still young girls who fluctuate between being the children they still are and the young women they are beginning to turn into. Are they (and we) meant to see themselves as little girls, as teenagers, or as young women?
This body of work was inspired by my thirteen-year-old daughter who was transforming before my eyes, alternating between being the little girl I knew and the young woman I didn’t know yet.
I photographed girls in the US where I live and in Lebanon where I am originally from. These are not meant to be a comparison, on the contrary, as the lines blur quickly. Regardless of place, background and religion, girls that age everywhere seem united by similar feelings, aspirations and attitudes.
Juliette at 11, Beirut Lebanon, 2012
Alia 9, Bourj El Barajneh Refugee Camp, Beirut Lebanon, 2011
Installation shot . National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, 2016
A Girl and Her RoomAs a mother of teenage daughters I watch their passage from girlhood into adulthood, fascinated with the transformation taking place, the adult personality taking shape and a gradual self-consciousness replacing the carefree world they had known and lived in so far. I started photographing them and their girlfriends, and quickly realized how aware they were of each other›s presence, and how much the group affected the identity they were portraying to the world. From this recognition the idea of photographing each girl alone, by herself, emerged.
I originally let the young women chose where they wanted to be photographed and after a couple of them chose their bedroom, I realized that was the nexus of a project. The room was a metaphor, an extension of the girl, but also the girl seemed to be part of the room, to fit in, just like everything else in the material and emotional space.
While I started this work with my daughters and their friends, and with daughters of my friends, I eventually moved away from only photographing girls that I knew well. I enjoyed discovering new girls and building with them a photographer/model relationship with no expectation or holding back from either of us. I always spent time with each girl, so she was comfortable with me and eventually the photography session became a beautiful and intimate collaboration. I was discovering a person on the cusp on becoming an adult, but desperately holding on to the child she barely outgrew, a person on the edge between two worlds, trying to come to terms with this transitional time in her life and adjust to the person she is turning into. Posters of rock stars, political leaders or top models were displayed above a bed covered with stuffed animals; mirrors were an important part of the room, a reflection of the girls› image to the world; personal objects, photos, clothes everywhere, chaotic jumbles of pink and black make-up and just stuff, seemed to give a sense of security and warmth to the room like a womb within the outside world.
I initially started this work focusing on teenage girls in the United States and eventually expanded the project to include girls from the two worlds I am most familiar with, the two worlds I experienced myself as a young woman: the United States and the Middle East. This is how this project became personal to me. I became fascinated with the similar issues girls at that age face, regardless of culture, religion and background, as they learn to deal with all the pressures that arise as they become conscious and aware of the surrounding world wherever this may be.
Being with those young women in the privacy of their world gave me a unique peek into their private lives and their inner selves. They sensed that I was not judging them and became an active part of the project. Their frankness and generosity in sharing access was a privilege that they have extended to me but also to all the viewers of this work.
Christilla, Rabieh Lebanon, 2010
Siena, Brookline Massachusetts, 2009
Lubna, Beirut Lebanon, 2010
Mariam, Bourj al Shamali Palestinian Refugee Camp, Tyre Lebanon, 2009
Installation shot . Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA, 2013-2014
Unspoken ConversationsThis body of photographs explores womanhood at two important stages of life: adolescence and middle age. While I had been photographing teenage girls in A Girl and Her Room, pre-pubescent girls in L›Enfant-Femme, and adult women in Women Coming of Age, I found myself gradually including both mother and daughter in the same photograph. My focus shifted from the singular individual to the collective, combining and cumulative. Casual glances, hand gestures, subtle shifts in body language, physical closeness (or lack thereof), shared embarrassments, vulnerability, and admissions of uncertainties became the focus of the photographs. The glances and the emotions of the individual are combined within a single frame, conveying simultaneously the personal and the universality of the complex mother and daughter relationship.
In this work, like in the rest of my artistic practice, I seek to focus on our essence, our physicality, our vulnerability, on growing up and growing old – the commonalities that make us human, to emphasize underlying similarities rather than apparent differences across cultures and to ultimately find beauty in our shared humanity.
Leila and Souraya, Jounieh Lebanon, 2015
Benedicte and Laeticia, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2014
Betsy and Madi, Watertown Massachusetts, 2016
L’Enfant-FemmePublisher Damiani Editore, released February 2016
Introduction by Her Majesty Queen Noor; essay by Lois Lowry; afterward by Kristen Gresh
A Girl and Her RoomPublished by UMBRAGE EDITIONS, released May 2012
Introduction by Susan Minot; essay by Anne Tucker
In Her ImagePhotographs by Rania Matar
Essay by Joy Kim, Assistant Curator Amon Carter MuseumExhibition publication
Books and Publications
ARAB NEWS Saturday, April 7, 20188
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Wafaa and Sanaa Bourj El Barajneh Refugee Camp, Beirut, Lebanon, 2017 ( ABOVE )
We’re flooded with pictures of veils. I’m so sick and tired of it. I want to demystify the Middle East a bit. When I first started photographing in the Middle East, it was after September 11 and I wanted to start telling a different story from the narrative we were bombarded with in the US by the mass media. I grew up in the Middle East; my parents were Palestinians and I was born and raised in Lebanon. What I was hearing on the radio was not what I experienced, even though I grew up during a war. I felt like the mass media often narrowed people to one dimension. Like, ‘Women in the Middle East are veiled, oppressed…’ And that was not what I knew. I never felt segregated in the Middle East because I was a woman. And it became important to me to portray that. I always tell people, even if I’m showing pictures of veiled women, it’s not about the fact they’re wearing a veil; it’s about their identity and they just happen to be wearing a veil. This is a family I’ve been photographing over the years in the refugee camps. I adore them. They’re twin sisters. They were originally facing me, in that pose. At one point, one of them was facing the other way, standing. And I went home and I couldn’t get that shot out of my head. And I realized the better shot was of them not facing me, because of the textures of the headscarves. So I had to go back and ask them for that, which I usually don’t do, but this time, I had to.
Brigitte and Huguette Ghazir, Lebanon, 2014 ( ABOVE )
This was emotional. Huguette Caland, the mother, is one of the most famous artists in the Middle East. As you can see, she’s getting older. She was no longer painting when I went to take that picture, but she’s wearing the smock she wore when she painted. The daughter was very protective of her. I started crying. And when I started crying, they both started crying. So I put my camera down. And the mother, who had seemed distant until then, said, ‘You’re an artist. Emotions are important. Don’t stop.’ So she gave me permission to make that photo, which added such a meaning to it, for me. Most of the other stuff is about women more my age with girls who are the ages of my daughters. Here, it’s the daughter who’s my age, with the mother who’s older. And the role of who’s the caretaker has shifted.
RANIA MATAR
ReelWomen
Adam Grundey Dubai
T here’s a lot for Rania Matar to be happy about right now. The Lebanese-Palestin-ian photographer — whose work mainly consists of projects that focus on beauti-fully composed, strikingly intimate por-traits of girls and women in a particular
period of their lives, (pre-pubescence, teenage years, and motherhood, for example) — launched her first big solo mu-seum show, “In Her Image,” at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, in December (it runs until June 17) and on April 12, an exhibition including work from a variety of her projects, “SHE,” opens at Galerie Tanit in Beirut. And this week, she discovered her work had earned her a pres-tigious Guggenheim fellowship. “I’m over the moon,” she said.
The museum show, she said, is “a big deal for me.”“It’s the first time a curator saw the link in all my work,” she
told Arab News. “I work on projects. Like, I’ll work on teenage girls in their bedrooms (in her project “A Girl and Her Room”). Or I’m working on pre-pubescent girls (“L’Enfant Femme”). Or mothers and daughters (“Unspoken Conversations”). I don’t look at the big picture. But the curator who offered me this show literally saw it as a whole — about womanhood and moth-erhood and all that. And it made me embrace that. Like, ‘Oh! Of course… That’s what I’m doing.’”
“SHE” is also the title of her newest work — selections from which will be exhibited in Beirut. “We just couldn’t come up with a better word to express that it’s about womanhood at all ages,” she explained.
Matar’s work is, she said, “autobiographical on some level” — often based around the various life stages of her daughters, for example. “SHE” was inspired by a period of stress around 18 months ago when Matar began losing her hair (which has now grown back). “It made me realize that (my hair is) so much part of my physicality and identity, and I became fascinated with that,” she said.
Apart from the autobiographical connection, another thread runs throughout Matar’s work, she noted. “I look for that vul-nerability. Not in a way to make the girls or the women look weaker. On the contrary; I think it’s empowering on some lev-el, to be able to expose your vulnerability. I think that’s present in all my work.”
Sara and Samira, Bourj El Barajneh Refugee Camp, Beirut, Lebanon, 2018 An image from Matar’s latest project, “SHE.” TOP
Wafa’a and Samira, Bourj El Barajneh Refugee Camp, Beirut Lebanon, 2016 An image from Matar’s “Unspoken Conversations” project, which featured mothers and daughters together. RIGHT
ARAB NEWS Saturday, April 7, 2018 9
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RANIA MATAR
In Her Own Words
On photographing womenThat wasn’t a conscious decision. It’s something that started instinctively. I don’t know if I’d get that same intimacy with men (as my subjects). I’m not ruling out the possibility of doing something with guys, but at this point, I feel like it’s important to me to photograph through the eyes of girls and follow that theme of growing up and growing older. I’m following my instincts, I guess, and where my energy’s going. On her ‘L’Enfant Femme’ seriesI found that pre-pubescent age so incredibly potent in my daughters. As soon as the body was turning into a woman’s body, their whole attitude was changing and I wanted to grasp that right away; that period is so short. So I started following the girls as they were getting older, and before I knew it I was — in some way — fol-lowing a girl’s life; from pre-puberty to menopause, I guess. On shooting to filmIt’s important, especially with the young girls. They’ve grown up in a generation of selfies and iPhones. When I tell them I’m shooting to film, they think I’m making a movie.
But the fact they can’t see the re-sults means they take the pho-toshoot much more seriously and they have to think about what to do with their hands and their bodies. I use a medium-format camera. It’s more deliberate than shooting digital. On not smilingI’m trying to grasp a moment that’s not being performed for the camera. I feel like we’re so programmed, now, to see people smiling for the camera. And at the same
time I’m not looking for the deadpan face that is often prevalent in modern photography. I’m not trying to avoid emotion; I’m trying to avoid the manufactured emotion that comes in for the camera. On shared humanityI feel like I live between two cul-tures. I’m equally part of both and it’s important to me to show that they’re not mutually exclusive. That’s something that has guided me all along. It’s made me realize on a very deep level — I don’t want to sound cliché, but… — there’s such a shared humanity. We put up these fake barriers: This person is black, white, Christian, Muslim, or whatever, but biology is happening. Life is happen-ing. All these girls (I photograph) are all going through the same changes, no matter where they’re from. They might have different goals, or differ-ent lives, but at the core, they’re all growing up and growing older and transforming in the same manner. I’m fascinated with all of that.
Artist’sCORNER
Soraya and Tala Yarze, Lebanon 2014 ( TOP )
This is the photo that made me realize I was doing the mother-daughter project, for many reasons. For one, it looks almost like a time-lapse; like, this is what the mother looked like 25 years earlier, and this is what the daughter’s going to look like much later, right? The other thing is the body language: The mother’s almost becoming the vulnerable one, holding herself, and the daughter’s come in with the confidence of her age, completely owning it. The daughter was about to leave Lebanon and go to college in the US, so it was very personal for me as well, because that’s what made me start that project; my daughter was leaving home.
Mariam Bourj al Shamali Palestinian Refugee Camp, Tyre, Lebanon, 2009 ( LEFT )
This was her first day wearing the hijab, and I think that gave her the confidence of feeling like a grown-up. I photographed her without it, too, and that photo’s not nearly so interesting to me. I think that hijab gave her the attitude.
Nour Beirut, Lebanon, 2017 ( ABOVE )
As I was telling you, I’m obsessed with hair and texture. She’s someone I didn’t know at all. I was having lunch and I saw her at a table in the back and went over to her, like, ‘I would love to photograph you.’ This project is still kind of in progress, I think my work might be going in a slightly different direction, So it’s less of a direct portrait style and attitude. It’s still a portrait of Nour, but it’s also a portrait of a place, and her relationship to that place. That relationship to the landscape became as important for me to portray.
This project, ‘L’Enfant Femme,’ was inspired by my younger daughter when she was 12. She was changing quite a bit at that point, finding her individuality
and all of that. Rania Matar
Galerie Tanit - BeyrouthEast Village Building - Ground Floor
Armenia Street - Mar Mikhael Beirut - Lebanon
+961 1 [email protected]
[email protected] www.galerietanit.com
