Akram Zaatari
Damaged Negatives: Scratched Portrait of an anonymous woman, 2012
Inkjet print. Made from 35mm scratched negative from the Hashem el Madani archive. Courtesy of the gallery.

Opening  November 27th at Thomas Dane Gallery, London is “On Photography People and Modern Times,” a solo exhibition by Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari. Zaatari is amongst the most influential artists of his generation and has played a critical role in developing the formal, intellectual and institutional infrastructure of Beirut’s contemporary art scene.  He is co-founder of the groundbreaking Arab Image Foundation (AIF) (1997) – an expanding collection of over 600,000 images – with a mission to preserve and study vernacular and studio photography from the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab diaspora.

Zaatari is widely known for his expansive practice in photography and film-making which reflects on the collecting, archiving and dissemination of such images and the performative role they play in the formation of individual and communal identities and histories. This sensibility was formed in the course of living through fifteen years of war in Lebanon, watching it unfold and recording it as a teenager. He has spent much of the last decade excavating the archive of Studio Sheherazade, established in 1953 by Hashem al-Madani in Saida, South Lebanon, Zaatari’s city of origin.

“On Photography People and Modern Times” is on view through Feburary 1st, 2013.

For more information visit Thomas Dane Gallery, London.