NYU’s GREY ART GALLERY PRESENTS RARE GLIMPSE OF PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY
FROM THE ARAB WORLD
Mapping Sitting: On Portraiture and Photography
A Project by Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari – Arab Image Foundation
January 11-April 2, 2005
New York City, October 25, 2004. In Mapping Sitting, two contemporary
artists present installations that dynamically disclose how
photographic portraits operated in the Middle East over the last
century. On view at the Grey Art Gallery from January 11 through April
2, this timely and topical exhibition was conceived by Walid Raad-a
media artist based in New York and Beirut and best known for his
innovative project titled The Atlas Group-and Akram Zaatari, a
prominent video artist, filmmaker, and curator who lives and works in
Beirut. Raad and Zaatari have devised four sections based on the
Middle Eastern tradition of `surprise’ street photography, on
itinerant photography, on institutional group portraits, and on
passport images. The latter features over 4,500 postage stamp-sized
passport portraits, while a video projection presents group photos of
military soldiers taken in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Egypt
in the first half of the 20th century.
Raad and Zaatari reveal how Arab portrait photography not only
pictured individuals and groups, but also functioned as commodity,
luxury item, and adornment. Their installations feature diverse
photographs from the Arab Image Foundation-an archive in Beirut
housing more than 70,000 images taken by professional and amateur
photographers from the late 19th century to the present.
Collectively, the photographs convey pluralistic and dynamic Middle
Eastern communities through the lenses of indigenous
photographers-images far different from photos of the region
circulating widely today in the popular press.
Mapping Sitting presents four distinct practices: studio passport
photography; institutional group portrait photography; the street
tradition of ` photo-surprise’; and portraits by itinerant
photographers. These four forms are examined through the works of
Tripoli-based Armenian photographer Antranik Anouchian (1908-1991);
Lebanese photographer Hashem el Madani (born 1930); various group
portrait photographers who were active in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria,
Egypt, and Iraq between 1880 and 1960; and early 1950s street
`photo-surprise’ images by Setrak Albarian and Sarkis Restikian of the
Photo Jack Studio in Tripoli, Lebanon. Addressing the proliferation of
photographic portrait industries in the Arab world, the exhibition not
only raises questions about portrait photography in the Middle East,
but also about portraiture, photography, and visual culture in
general.
The history of photography in the Arab world is not well documented.
Introduced in the Middle East by colonial occupiers in the mid-19th
century, photography was, at first, dominated by Western practitioners
who focused primarily on antiquities, regional landscape, and exotic
traditions. Local photographic production flourished after Yessai
Garabedian, the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, held the first
photography workshop in the region in the 1860s.In the years that
followed, photographic production continued to expand, especially as
Armenian exiles, many of whom had been trained as photographers, fled
Turkey for Islamic countries. With the arrival of Kodak box cameras in
the 1880s and 1890s, the appetite for photographic images increased.
As photography spread throughout Middle Eastern culture, modernization
was transforming the region. The social, political, and economic lives
of the emerging nation-states gave rise to nationalist liberation
movements alongwith evolving awareness of geography and
identity. Modern building methods and urban planning were implemented,
labor and women’s movements developed, and new literary and artistic
forms focused on identity as the central issue in developing
socio-political realities. Contrary to Western images of the Arab
world, which often depicted marginalized or dehumanized subjects,
photographs by indigenous Middle Eastern residents captured the
quotidian lives of these changing communities. Concentrating on
commercial photography, Mapping Sitting’s creators Walid Raad and
Akram Zaatari-artists who also function inthis instance as
curators-pose a number of questions: What historical, aesthetic,
philosophical, and cultural conceptions of photography are repeated
and/or questioned in these images? What can we learn about notions of
identity from these portraits? Keeping in mind the peculiar conditions
of production, distribution, and consumption of the images, Mapping
Sitting also investigates how these photographic practices reveal
characteristics of nascent national identities.
Walid Raad is Assistant Professor of Art at Cooper Union in New York
City.
His works include textual analysis, video, and photography
projects. He has recently performed at the Centre Georges Pompidou,
Paris; the House of World Cultures, Berlin; and the Institute of
Contemporary Arts, London. In 2002,his Atlas Group was included in the
Whitney Biennial, New York, and Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany. Akram
Zaatari is the author of more than 30 videos, including This Day
(2003), How I Love You (2001), Her + Him Van Leo (2001). His writings
appear in critical and scholarly journals such as Parachute,
Framework, Bomb, Al-Adaab, and Al-Nahar. Zaatari is a co-founder of
the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut; Raad sits on the organization’s
board.
Mapping Sitting is complemented by a 250-page publication that
includes 840 photographs, designed by Mind The Gap Productions in
Lebanon, and co-edited by Karl Bassil, Zeina Maasri, and Akram Zaatari
in collaboration with Walid Raad.
In conjunction with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Cooper
Union,a series of public programs will explore the multiple issues
this timely exhibition brings to light. The Grey Art Gallery and the
Arab Image Foundation are organizing a national tour of Mapping
Sitting.
The exhibition is made possible in part by the Islamic World Arts
Initiative, a program of Arts International generously supported by
the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, and the New York State
Council on the Arts. The Grey Art Gallery presentation is made
possible in part by the Abby Weed Grey Trust. Educational programs are
supported in part by the Grey Art Gallery’s Inter/National Council.