Photographer Rania Matar: Capturing Beautiful Awkwardness
December 9, 2021—All-school assembly featured Rania Matar, a Lebanese-born American documentary and portrait photographer whose powerful photographs captured the daily lives of girls and women in the Middle East and in the U.S. Throughout her career Raina has dedicated her work to exploring issues of identity and individuality through photographs of female adolescence and womanhood.
Rania started her career as an architect before pursuing her passion for photography, which she started by capturing intimate and everyday moments with her own children as subjects. She explained that you don’t have to travel to exotic places to find beauty in the “wonderful mess” of our day-to-day lives.
She spoke to the students about framing a subject and developing a trust and respect for whomever she is trying to capture. Her photography brought her across the globe to war-torn Syria and Palestinian refugee camps. In one photograph, a child smiles in the midst of destroyed buildings on the verge of collapse. The child in the rubble looks up and into the frame “like a phoenix rising from the ashes.”
Other photos she presented poignantly capture the “beautiful awkwardness” of adolescence and how girls express themselves through their surroundings and spaces, such as bedrooms, as well as poses. She noted the similarities between girls in their stance (down to the tilt of their heads) and their gaze, and showed side-by-side photographs of girls from the U.S. and the countries where she has traveled to show the amazing similarities, despite cultural divides.
Rania has published four books and is currently a professor of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her most recent book is SHE.
