In Her Image
Photographs by Rania Matar
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© Rania Matar
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In Her Image brings together four bodies of work made between 2009 and 2016, by the Lebanese-American photographer Rania Matar that trace the development of female identity through portraiture. The exhibition was originally organized by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, curated by Joy Jeehye Kim, and also exhibited at the Cleveland Museum of Art, facilitated by curator Barbara Tannenbaum.
"Depicting transitional moments of life, from young girlhood to middle age, Matar’s works address personal and collective identity through photographs mining female adolescence and womanhood. Photographing girls and women in both the United States and the Middle East, the artist shows how the forces that shape female identity transcend cultural and geographic boundaries." -Joy Jeehye Kim, Assistant Curator Amon Carter Museum of American Art |
This exhibition surveys four series by the artist. L’Enfant-Femme explores how girls on the cusp of puberty often adopt stereotypical personas derived from mass media when posing for the camera. Matar re-photographed some of those girls three years later to create Becoming: pairs of images chronicling the transition to womanhood. A Girl and Her Room portrays teens in their bedrooms—the personal spaces that best reflect their inner selves. The final series, Unspoken Conversations, juxtaposes adolescent daughters and their middle-aged mothers to convey the complexity and universality of the mother-daughter relationship.
“Matar is a masterful portraitist who, by focusing on the individual, reveals truths about the universal experience of what it means to be female. She establishes a strong and intimate bond with her sitters as she explores the transitions from girlhood through puberty to womanhood and middle age.”
-Barbara Tannenbaum, curator of photography, Cleveland Museum of Art
Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984. As a Lebanese-born American woman and mother, her cross-cultural experience and personal narrative inform her photography. She has dedicated her work to exploring issues of personal and collective identity through photographs of female adolescence and womanhood – both in the United States where she lives and the Middle East where she is from – in an effort to focus on notions of identity and individuality, within the context of the underlying universality of these experiences. Matar received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018.
Rania Matar is available to attend the openings, give artist talks and engage in conversations.
“Matar is a masterful portraitist who, by focusing on the individual, reveals truths about the universal experience of what it means to be female. She establishes a strong and intimate bond with her sitters as she explores the transitions from girlhood through puberty to womanhood and middle age.”
-Barbara Tannenbaum, curator of photography, Cleveland Museum of Art
Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984. As a Lebanese-born American woman and mother, her cross-cultural experience and personal narrative inform her photography. She has dedicated her work to exploring issues of personal and collective identity through photographs of female adolescence and womanhood – both in the United States where she lives and the Middle East where she is from – in an effort to focus on notions of identity and individuality, within the context of the underlying universality of these experiences. Matar received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018.
Rania Matar is available to attend the openings, give artist talks and engage in conversations.
Number of Photographs: 50
Rental fee: $6,500 for 8 to 12 weeks
Rental fee: $6,500 for 8 to 12 weeks
Amon Carter Museum
Exhibition Press:
"Shows like this help to change perceptions and start conversations. Like visual arts generally, and the space they are displayed in, the photographs serve as a portal to a more inclusive perspective on community and the potential for our place internationally. They lead our eyes to a more hopeful horizon."
-Anderson Turner reviewed "In Her Image" at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Akron Beacon Journal
"Born and raised in Lebanon and a resident (and citizen) of the United States, Rania Matar could qualify as the August Sander of female portraiture. Her expanding body of work, in both Western and Arab worlds, provides a revealing overview of what it is like to be a woman now, from preadolescence to maturity."
Lyle Rexer, about "In Her Image" in Photograph Magazine
"Shows like this help to change perceptions and start conversations. Like visual arts generally, and the space they are displayed in, the photographs serve as a portal to a more inclusive perspective on community and the potential for our place internationally. They lead our eyes to a more hopeful horizon."
-Anderson Turner reviewed "In Her Image" at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Akron Beacon Journal
"Born and raised in Lebanon and a resident (and citizen) of the United States, Rania Matar could qualify as the August Sander of female portraiture. Her expanding body of work, in both Western and Arab worlds, provides a revealing overview of what it is like to be a woman now, from preadolescence to maturity."
Lyle Rexer, about "In Her Image" in Photograph Magazine