WUNRN
PHOTOGRAPHER RANIA MATAR
EXHIBIT: A GIRL & HER ROOM
Elham 18,
Shatila Refugee Camp, Beirut, Lebanon 2009
“My parents can't send me to school so I am studying
alone for my exams to graduate high school. Afterward I want to study in a
Shari'ah school. I was once engaged but did not love the boy. I just wanted to
make it easier on my parents and get married
so they don’t have to worry about me. But at the end, I just couldn't do
it and I left him.”
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Siena 17, Brookline, Massachusetts USA 2009
"When I was thinking about my picture what was running through my head was how the models on my wall are the people I strive to look like whether I do subconsciously or not. And then I started asking myself why and how we define beauty, what is beautiful? And where am I on the scale of beauty in relation to the pictures on my wall? Am I good enough?”
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Background on Exhibit: A Girl &
Her Room
By Photographer Rania Matar
"As a mother of a teenage daughter I watch with awe her passage from girlhood into adulthood, with all the complications that it entails. As I am observing her and her girlfriends, I became fascinated with the transformation taking place, with the adult personality shaping up and with an insecurity and a self-consciousness that are now replacing the carefree world those girls had live in so far. I started photographing them in group situations, and quickly realized that they were so aware of each others' presence, and that their being in a group affected very much whom they were portraying to the world. I also realized that under an air of self-assurance, those young women were often very fragile, self-conscious and confused. While their bodies were developing fast into women bodies, they were still on many levels young girls who suddenly thought they had to behave like adults.
From there, emerged the idea of photographing each girl alone. I originally let the girls choose the place of their choice and was slowly welcomed into their bedrooms, an area that is theirs, that they can fully control and be themselves in, within an outside world that is often intimidating. I spent time with each girl, so she was comfortable with me and was able to let down her guards, free of any preconception of what she would like to portray. I was fascinated to discover a person on the cusp on becoming an adult, but desperately holding on to the child she just barely left behind, 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 becoming. Posters of rock stars, political leaders or top models were often displayed above a bed still covered with stuffed animals; mirrors were always an important part of the room, a reflection of the girls’ image to the outside world.
Having originally started this work in the US where I live, I expanded it to include girls from different cultures and backgrounds mainly the 2 worlds I am most familiar with: the United States and the Middle East. Despite cultural and sometimes religious differences, I found the similar tension, duality and body language everywhere. Girls have to deal with their changing bodies, with finding their identities and assuming a greater independence. Under those pressures they often rebel to a degree: some might paint their hair, others might get a tattoo, others might want to reach an attainable goal, look or weight and still others might decide to wear a veil or turn to politics or religion. In all cases, it is fascinating for me as photographer to observe simultaneously in each of those girls aspects of the little girls they barely left behind and glimpses of the women they were turning into.
Being with those young women in the privacy of their world gave me a unique peak into their private lives and their real selves. They sense that I am not judging them, that I am not there to make them someone they are not, and the photography session ends up being a beautiful collaboration."