| Samer Mohdad | ||
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UNCA - Oct. 30-Nov. 29, 2000 |
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| My
Arabia
Lebanon - 1999 Award Winner "My Arabias" is a phrase that does not exist in any dictionary or encyclopedia. I invented it to satisfy my need as a writer who works with light. Seen from the outside, the Arab world looks like a powder keg ready to explode. Conflict and hatred seem to dominate the Middle East, as people divide themselves along religious lines. Westerners believe that being Arab means being Muslim. Our minds are saturated by the misleading images on our television screen. When we look at the Arab world from the inside, our vision changes. Three of the world's great monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - originated in this part of the world. Over the centuries, nomadic tribes adapted to the changes brought by each successive religion, even as they absorbed the influences from Central Asian cultures. What has become of these older cultures? Where can they be located? In 1991, after living in the West for ten years, I went back to the Middle East to look for traces of these buried traditions and to express my feelings towards my roots. I went looking for what I already knew. These photographs map a long inner voyage into the landscape of my emotions. Since photography is so subjective, it lends itself to diverse interpretations. I have tried to capture the realities of this region without making any judgments. In all honesty, I am worried about the Arab world as it is today. It makes me think more deeply about what it means to be Arab or European, Persian or Turkish. All of this is particularly insignificant in a region where very early in human history, many cultures succeeded one another and now live next to each other. The women in Jewish villages veil themselves as Muslim women do. A man dressed as a Bedouin is not necessarily Muslim; he can also be Christian. How is it possible to define Arab identity when it is increasingly no narrowly identified with Islam? Biographical Information: Samer Mohdad was born in Bzebdine, Leganon in 1964. In 1988, he obtained a diploma in art photography from Liege, Brussels and began working in Paris for Vu. In 1989, he was the recipient of the Nikon Award and he held an exhibition called "The Other Side of War" at the museum of Photography in Charleroi. In 1990, his second exhibition, "the near Near East" was presented at the Elysee Museum in Lausanne. The museum commissioned a series of photographs on the Swiss army during the country's 700th birthday for a book and exhibition entitled "Another Side of Switzerland." In 1991, he received an award at the World Press Photo, exposed at the Charleroi triennial, and began work on "My Arabias" by traveling to Algeria and Yemen. In 1992, he received the Hachette grant and showed "Children, War, Lebanon 1985-1992" at Visa pour l'image in Perpignan. In 1993, he published a book by the same title. The exhibition was also at the Elysee Museum. The same year, he began taking photographs of the 387 Palestinians which were expelled from Southern Lebanon's no man's land. Those photos were published under the title "Return to Gaza." "Du," a magazine published in Zurich, asked him to do a special double feature on Islam. The following year "Du" sent him to Iran with D. Schwarts and T. Kern to do "The Roads of Ispahan." In 1996, he was a member of the World Press Photo jury, president of the selection committee for the Near and Middle East at the WPP Masterclass. In 1997, he was the curator of "Martyrs of Cana" at Arles' Rencontres Internationales de las Photography and at the Elysee Museum. In 1998, he photographed and organized "Un si proche Orient" (So Near is the East) for the Mediterranean season in Arles where he also organized a workshop on independent photojournalism for "Nouveau paysage humain" (A New Human Landscape) at the Rencontres 98. He was the curator of "Intimate Lebanon 1900-1960" during the Month of Photography in Paris with the collaboration of the IMA (French acronym for the Institute of the Arab World). In 1999, he won the Mother Jones Award in San Francisco.
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For additional information on the photographs of Samer Mohdad and Lebanon:
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