Contemporary Photographer Series - Rania Matar

Anna F, Winchester, MA 2009 © Rania Matar

Rania Matar is a contemporary photographer whose work in the United States and the Middle East focuses on the lives of young girls and women. Her work is held in collections around the world including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida and the Lehmbruck Museum in Germany. Her photographs have been published in two monographs - Ordinary Lives by Quantuck Lane Press in 2009 and A Girl and Her Room by Umbrage Editions in 2012. She was recently interviewed by Kasey Sisko for our Contemporary Photographer Series (CPS).

You have multiple series of work that focus on adolescent women. Why are you most interested in this time frame?

I am a mother of two daughters, I have sons as well, but I have always been fascinated with girls probably because I was one. I started working with A Girl and Her Room when I realized my daughter, who was fifteen at the time, was changing. I was not sure what angle to work from because I knew a lot of people had photographed teenagers. So I started photographing her when her friends came over and then eventually I realized that they were performing for each other. I thought it would be interesting to photograph each girl by herself and so the process kind of evolved in that direction. As I was moving forward with the project I realized I was interested with the girl in her own space and it became A Girl and Her Room. When the project was over, my younger daughter was eleven and she was becoming more aware of her womanhood and her femininity. So then I decided to start photographing younger girls. At that point I was more focused on the girl and her body language, than on her space. Even though they were both a part of adolescence, they were at very different stages. 

Do you consider A Girl and Her Room and L'Enfant-Femme to be Feminist bodies of work?

No, I do not consider them to be Feminist bodies of work. At least they were not made in that state of mind. The work was done very much in the state of mind that I was a girl and now a woman. I am fascinated seeing how girls are forming and growing up, how their bodies are transforming and their identities developing and how they're dealing with all of this and with the pressures of fitting into the world of adults, while still feeling like little girls on many levels. It is hard and I give all of them a lot of credit for sharing themselves and their spaces with me.

Ayla 9, Beirut Lebanon, 2011 © Rania Matar

I read that you allow the girls to pose themselves, but after that how much do you allow them to contribute to the portrait?

It was a very different process between A Girl and Her Room and L'Enfant-Femme. With A Girl and Her Room it was more collaborative. I would go to their home and we would build up the photo session gradually. I worked with the girls and let the photo session develop by observing them at first and letting them participate as they felt more comfortable. With the younger girls, it was very much about the gaze and their relationship to the camera. I would ask the girls not to smile and let them pose themselves and I might direct them very slightly. I want the portrait to be about them. I might have made very slight changes to their postures so they fit better in the frame. I do not want it to be about me, I want it to be about them, their own body language and their identity, so it's a very fine line.

I originally let them pick their outfits, but I sometimes make the girls change when I arrive. I do not work with any extra lighting so I might ask for them to change out of a dark color. I try to get involved in the process without being heavy handed. If I decide to pick clothing out, I will make sure we make the choice together and it is something the girls like because I want them to be comfortable. I usually only make them change when they are wearing a bad color. Black is always very unflattering in images especially if the clothing is very loose and big.

One of my favorite images is of a girl called Clara. I went to photograph her sisters but she was sitting there getting grumpy because I didn't photograph her. She was originally too young. I thought, well I'll take a few shots of her and so her mother fixed her hair like that. It was like a gift. It was beautiful. I could not have thought of it, so it really is on some level collaborative. 

Clara 8, Beirut Lebanon, 2012 © Rania Matar

Throughout art history, mirrors have symbolized self-knowledge and wisdom. You have made several portraits with the girls holding or looking into mirrors. Are the mirrors symbolic of anything specific in your work?

When I was working on A Girl and Her Room, I found the mirror very interesting. The mirror opens up a whole new world of self-awareness. I feel at that age you are very self-conscious so the mirror is interesting at that level and a mirror was always present in the rooms. It was an interesting way of seeing her from the front, the back, and who is looking at whom.

Madi 10, Watertown Massachusetts, 2013 © Rania Matar

I think portraits are best accomplished when the subject feels comfortable around the photographer. I read that you knew many of your first subjects, but how do you approach subjects you did not know and make them feel comfortable?

I ended up very quickly working with girls I did not know. I am much more comfortable when I do not know the person very closely. This is especially true when I am photographing young women as I did not want to have a role associated with their mother. I did not want to be a friend of their mother or a mother of their friend - I wanted to be their photographer, discover them with fresh eyes and have that clear relationship between us. I started with the girls I knew but I quickly moved away from that. I found that it made me and the girl feel more self-conscious. Once I had photographed a few girls and had a better sense of the project, I started finding young women I found interesting everywhere I went. I wouldn't just say, "I want to photograph you." I would explain to them that I am a mom, I have kids, I know this is awkward but I am doing this project, etc. etc. I never expected them to answer right there but offered to email them and tell them more about it. I found that this was a good approach and I wasn't putting them on the spot and then once I emailed them the dialogue was open. 

Siena, Brookline, MA, 2009 © Rania Matar