Internationally acclaimed photographer, artist, documentary filmmaker, Akram Zaatari from Beirut, Lebanon. Growing up in a war-zone in the Middle east, being identified as an Arab artist, he has established his unique poetic photography and documentary work style. His works have exhibited MoMA in New York and other museums around the world. He is a founding member of the Arab Image Foundation for preservation and study images of the Arabs.
This Day (83 min, 2003) – Shot in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, this essay uses transportation, video, and photography to examine images circulating in a historically charged, and presently war-torn and divided, Middle East. From images of camels in the desert to images of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the video looks at states of mind in relation to actual geographies. The video pays tribute to an unformatted and open-ended documentary approach, and examines modes of access to information such as travel, television and the Internet, while carefully displaying the resulting iconography. (from video deta bank)
Her + Him VAN LEO (2001) -A portrait of a studio photographer, Her + Him VAN LEO also examines the photography of the 1940s and 50s from a critical perspective rather than a nostalgic one. This documentary utilizes traditional portrait photography and video in a dialogue between two media: crafted black and white print, and the electronically colored and manipulated screen. This dialog comments on the transformations in art practices and terminologies, and evokes some of the social/urban/political transformations that took place in Egypt over 50 years of its recent history. (from Video Data Bank)
