Famed French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once observed, “Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.”
Cartier-Bresson’s desire to capture the vitality of the moment is the driving force behind “NAZAR: Photographs from the Arab World,” a diverse exhibition of photographic works currently touring the United States. First shown at the Noorderlicht Photofestival in Holland, NAZAR (an Arabic word for “vision”) has made its first stop in America at FotoFest at Vine Street Studios (www.fotofest.org) in Houston, Texas.
Featuring works by 18 contemporary Arab photographers and four photo archives, NAZAR is a complex, fascinating, and deeply personal look at both historic and modern-day Arab cultures in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.
“In this exhibit, there is range of work from contemporary post-modern conceptual work to more traditional documentary work to photo-journalism,” says Wendy Watriss, artistic director at FotoFest. “It’s very rich in the way it layers different ways of looking at different aspects of life in the Middle East.”
Displayed in a beautifully-restored 19th-century warehouse in downtown Houston, the historic component of NAZAR is called “Looking Back,” a video-based montage of hundreds of rare photos selected from four archives: Foundation Arabe Pour l’Image in Lebanon, Lehnert & Landrock in Austria, the Marc Garanger in France and the Van Leo archive Egypt.
“Arab Eyes,” the closely viewable portion of NAZAR, consists of 250 contemporary images mounted on FotoFest’s brightly lit, 20-foot walls. The images in “Arab Eyes” depict subjects as diverse as family gatherings in an Algerian village, urban landscapes in Beirut, squatters living atop Cairo office buildings, and a graphic depiction of an Israeli military incursion into a Palestinian refugee camp.
A standout photographer in the exhibition is Lalla Essaydi, a Moroccan with Saudi roots, who uses Arabic texts from her diaries to decorate the clothing of her subjects and the backgrounds where they are photographed.
“Lalla Essaydi is taking the media to a personally interpreted realm,” says Watriss. “While creating something beautiful, she also skillfully introduces elements that mean something more.”
Watriss says Tarek Al-Ghoussein, a Kuwaiti now living in the United Arab Emirates, also deserves special recognition for a series of self-portraits in strategic locales where he is always shown with his head swathed in a red-checkered kaffiyeh while his hand clutches a stone. “Clearly, this artist is questioning the iconic symbols implied by his traditional Arab headdress and the stone. This is a device employed by many artists who themselves have been subject to cultural stereotyping because of political history or cultural history, particularly in relation to a larger and stronger power.”
Another noteworthy photographer featured in “Arab Eyes” is Hicham Benohoud, a Moroccan photography teacher who asked his students to create several selfportraits with the aid of treasured objects and other locally available props.
The photos reflect a uniquely individual interpretation of the culture and circumstances of each student’s environment.
“The photos in NAZAR are some of the most powerful and honest images that I have ever seen,” says Aida Ariassi, executive director of the Houston-based Bilateral US-Arab Chamber of Commerce, which partially underwrote the cost of bringing the exhibit to the United States. “Unfortunately, the media commonly perpetuates many misconceptions and distortions about the Arabs and the Middle East. Americans don’t usually see images like these. They don’t usually get this message.”
Echoing Ariassi, Edward P. Djerejian, former US ambassador to Syria, says, that the role of art in personifying the human condition “brings it home to individuals who are mostly exposed to the political, economic, and, unfortunately, the military dimensions of these issues.”
Now serving as president of the Houston-based Baker Institute at Rice University, Djerejian adds: “We at the Baker Institute favor more programs like NAZAR because they do so much to promote understanding.”
Watriss added, “There are many aspects of the NAZAR exhibition that are provocative and new; and there are other aspects with which people will feel very comfortable because they are so beautiful. The overwhelmingly positive reaction that we are getting from the public is a reflection of the hunger that people have for more information about this part of the world. And the fact that this exhibit is going to more than one place in the United States is a reflection of the strong attention that photography from the Arab world is receiving.”
The NAZAR exhibition concludes in Houston on June 23. In September, it opens at the Aperture Foundation Gallery in New York City (www.aperture.org).
