I was born in Beirut, Lebanon and left at the age of 5 during the war. One of the few memories I have are of hearing the bombs going off around my home. I remember the fear running through me thinking they sounded so loud as if they were about to hit our home.
I first fell in love with art when my older cousin took me to the Metropolitan Museum of art when I was in middle school. I remember walking in and making a left to see the Greek and Roman sculptures. I was amazed at the beauty of the figure made out of marble. I was in awe at how they were able to express human emotion in a sculpture and how they expressed the tension and beauty of the human figure simply from carving a slab.
I began to study art in HS but didn’t think that I could make it as an artist. My HS art teacher convinced me to apply to the School of Visual arts in the city. I remember going to the application review and bringing my portfolio to be critiqued. I was so nervous thinking how the interviewer was going to judge me. Was I good enough? As I spoke about my work I became at ease. This was something I was really passionate about and I realized that continuing to be an artist was something I had to pursue. Getting accepted, even though I didn’t study there, solidified to me that I should continue.
During college I studied all mediums but fell in love with photography when I was researching in the library and came upon a book from Henri Cartier-Bresson. His way of capturing the decisive moment, use of contrast and composition was mesmerizing. I couldn’t stop looking at his photographs and studying his technique.
I focused on photography and spent years studying the human figure, light, nature and documenting worlds that were unlike my own. I studied dark room photography and from the first to the last time that I put the paper in the developer and it appeared - a feeling would come over me. It was amazing to see the image appear slowly and with each different exposure I could get closer and closer to what I had originally seen through the lens.
Photographing nudes seemed like second nature to me and though I always tried to have my models feel comfortable, I had a peer say to me that I would never understand what they felt until I became one of them. I used the studio and had my sister photograph me and it was an awakening to be so open in front of a camera that would take this moment and cement it onto paper. I felt bare as if the camera could see through to my soul. It was scary and exhilarating at the same time.
In the spring of 2004 I did an internship at the gallery in college and the curator was so impressed with my proposal for a show “A Woman’s Eye,” an exhibit of photographs by three women artists who create different and distinct images of women, that she had me come back the following semester to curate the show. I got to contact the photographers, their agents and the galleries who represented them. I was able to go to the galleries, to the back rooms where no outsider was allowed to view the prints and choose the ones for my show. I felt special, as if I had transcended from a student studying photography to a curator who had the ability to choose what pieces should be shown. I remember having a hard time hanging the show and the curator showed me the importance of the placement of the art in the room to the viewers. I had to rearrange the pieces 3 times before I had gotten it ‘right’. I learned so much in this experience and it changed how I exhibited my own work.
Growing up in an Arabic home in America I was very aware of how cultures were different in most aspects of family, tradition and customs. I always felt a need to see the world and study more cultures and their various customs. I started to travel and shoot documentary photographs. I focused on architecture, children, nudes and various workers. My travels changed me with every country I visited.
It was always great to show my work in college, but being able to get shows in galleries and other venues was exhilarating. I remember showing my work for my Thesis and having so much anxiety about speaking about my process to an audience of strangers. I imagined no one ever knew that I was the artist and would hang around my work to just listen to what people would say not knowing that I was the artist. I felt that people would talk more openly if they didn’t know the artist was next to them and I got to hear honest opinions.
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