Rania Matar Photography explores personal & collective identity issues through photos of women in the US and Middle East.

I initially started this work focusing on teenage girls in the US and eventually expanded the project to include girls from the two worlds I am most familiar with. The two worlds I experienced myself as a young woman – the United States and the Middle East – made this project personal to me.

Rania Matar draws upon her own cross-cultural background to explore personal narratives with her young female subjects. Born and raised in Lebanon, Matar moved to the United States in early adulthood.

Feb 13, 2025 · The photographs of Lebanese Palestinian American artist, based in Boston, Rania Matar tell the stories of young women through portraits taken throughout Lebanon, France, Egypt, and the United States.

Rania Matar: She focuses on young women in their late teens and early twenties, who are leaving the cocoon of home, entering adulthood and facing a new reality. Depicting women in the United States and the Middle East, this project highlights how female subjectivity develops in parallel forms across cultural lines.

Jun 15, 2016 · Matar’s documentary photographs depict women and girls in the U.S. and the Middle East, highlighting universal themes of developing identity. “A Girl and Her Room,” her largest series, features images of young women surrounded by their possessions and creations. “In 2002 I was in Lebanon and went with a cousin of mine to a Palestinian refugee camp.

The photographs of Lebanese Palestinian American artist Rania Matar—captured through car windows, in abandoned buildings, snow-strewn fields, or floating in the Mediterranean Sea—tell the stories of young women through portraits taken …

Aug 7, 2023 · First, can you tell me a little about where you grew up and how it led you to think about working in photography? Rania Matar: Sure. I grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese Civil War and left in 1984 to attend Cornell University in …

Feb 2, 2018 · Photographer Rania Matar makes series of portraits – young girls posing, teenagers in their bedrooms, mothers with their daughters. Her subjects all live in Lebanon, where Matar grew up, or in Massachusetts, where she lives now.

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.