Rania Matar’s portraits let the women decide how to inhabit the frame
In Where Do I Go?, the Lebanese-born photographer uses rooms, streets and a shuttered theater to make portraits with the women who know those places.
Photo: Rania Matar
In Rania Matar’s portrait of Aya, a painted eye on a Beirut wall is almost as arresting as the person standing beside it. Aya’s white dress pulls the eye back across the bare room. The photograph keeps both presences in play. That balance between a person and the place she occupies runs through Matar’s book Where Do I Go?
Give the place room in the portrait
In Matar’s picture of Rhea S. at Beirut’s Piccadilly Theater, red seats take up much of the frame. Rhea sits low in the composition, almost hidden among the rows. Giving the room so much space changes the way you read her scale and posture. The setting carries part of the story.
Photo: Rania Matar
A book built through collaboration
Matar describes the women as active participants in making the photographs. When you look through the book, notice where they put themselves within each setting and how much of the room Matar leaves in view. The book was published by KAPH Books and the Eskenazi Museum of Art. The photographer lists a signing at Paris Photo on Saturday, November 14, at 3 p.m. local time at the KAPH Books booth, L13.
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