Where Do I Go?
Where Do I Go?
Rania Matar
September 13, 2022
This March, Leica Camera USA handed out the Leica Women Foto Project Awards for the third time. Rania Matar is one of the winners with her project Where Do I Go?, in which she explored identity issues for young women in Lebanon.
“I see myself in many of the images: in Lea at La Maison Rose in particular. For that reason it became the cover of my book She. I photographed Lea at the abandoned maison overlooking the Mediterranean, a staple of the old remaining Lebanese architecture. Many of the old homes damaged during the Lebanese Civil War are still standing – a painful reminder of a past that looms heavy over the collective memory of the younger generation, who are growing up in its shadow. Here, Lea is looking at us but her body is turning the other way, toward the Mediterranean Sea, as if symbolically torn in two directions.”
More information about the Leica Women Foto Project Award award can be found here. A comprehensive interview with Rania Matar can be found in LFI 6/2022
“I see myself in many of the images: in Lea at La Maison Rose in particular. For that reason it became the cover of my book She. I photographed Lea at the abandoned maison overlooking the Mediterranean, a staple of the old remaining Lebanese architecture. Many of the old homes damaged during the Lebanese Civil War are still standing – a painful reminder of a past that looms heavy over the collective memory of the younger generation, who are growing up in its shadow. Here, Lea is looking at us but her body is turning the other way, toward the Mediterranean Sea, as if symbolically torn in two directions.”
More information about the Leica Women Foto Project Award award can be found here. A comprehensive interview with Rania Matar can be found in LFI 6/2022
Image and text: © Rania Matar
Rania Matar+-
Born and brought up in Lebanon, Matar moved to the USA in 1984. She studied Architecture and later Photography, at, among others, the New England School of Photography. She received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018. In 2021 her book, She (Radius Books), was published: a series of portraits that show women and being a woman beyond borders limitations. Matar teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. More