Long stored in files or dumped in dusty basements, the spontaneous, seemingly ephemeral portraits taken by working studio photographers have been getting a second look over the past 20 years. Such rediscovered work revealed modern American masters of the vernacular in figures like Mike Disfarmer and E.J. Bellocq. Now the photographs of Lebanese photographer Hashem El Madani are set to be discovered. Over a career of more than 50 years (and counting) of work in Saida, Lebanon, El Madani has documented a people who have suffered great social upheaval but who, when posing for his camera, felt free and safe to be who they wanted. The subjects of his photographs exude dignity, strength, good humor and individuality. The conventions of studio photography remain static, but over time, the parade of faces who passed in front of El Madani's lens would change with the times, forming a shifting collective portrait of a Middle Eastern town in the last half of the twentieth century. “I would have liked to have photographed all the people of Saida,” he said, “because that is where I live.”

Hashem El Madani: Studio Practices

Arts & Photography

Wombell, Paul

Wright, Stephen

Individual Artists

Mind the Gap/Arab Image Foundation

Setting up on a sunny day at the beach or snapping a passport photo, the studio photographer measures out his working day in repeated frames, fixing the ordinary customer on film. Addressing the enduring value of these portraits and the viewer's common humanity with the subjects is the aim of Mapping Sitting, a collection of studio photographs, primarily from the 1950s and 1960s, that shows an Arab world that defies stereotypes. Drawn from the archives of the Arab Image Foundation, whose mission is to rescue and preserve indigenous Arab photography, and curated by two Lebanese-born artists, Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari, these photographs provide a moving mosaic of Middle Eastern men and women posing in the studio, lounging on the sand, or goofing around on bikes. There are also pages of carefully indexed passport photos, which become charged with meaning in a post-9/11 world. The exhibition from which Mapping Sitting was drawn, mounted at the Grey Art Gallery in New York, was widely reviewed in publications such as The New York Times and New York Magazine.

Mapping Sitting: On Portraiture And Photography

Photography & Video

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Books by Mind the Gap/Arab Image Foundation