Aftermath of War in Lebanon

The images were taken in the immediate aftermath of war in Lebanon in 2006. I focused on women and children, on their resilience and their spirit. A toddler can bring a smile to her mother's face despite the surrounding destruction; a family visits where their home used to be, a girl learns to juggle in a skeleton of a building; a lady surveys the destruction of her Southern Lebanon village from the ledge of her balcony; and a little refugee girl leans on a rough concrete wall seemingly wishing for better days, as her mother nurses a baby in the backgound.

Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon. After studying architecture at American University in Beirut, Rania left Lebanon in 1984 and completed her training at Cornell University in the United States. She studied photography at the New England School of Photography and at the Maine Photographic Workshops in Mexico with Magnum photographer Constantine Manos, and eventually gave up her career as an architect to work as a freelance photographer. Rania has traveled widely in the Middle East and has photographed street scenes in Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. Her work focuses mainly on women and children in the Middle East, and her recent projects ? which examine the Palestinian refugee camps, the veil and its meanings, and the aftermath of war ? give a voice to people who have been forgotten or misunderstood. In Boston where she lives, she photographs regularly the daily lives of her four children. She develops and prints all of her work. Her work has won several awards, and has been published and exhibited widely in the United States and internationally in Germany, Argentina, Syria and most recently in Lebanon as part of "Moving Walls." She was recently awarded an artist grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, first Prize in Women in Photography International and the purchase prize at the Biennial for New England Photographers 2007. Her work was published in the October 2007 issue of B&W Magazine. Rania?s photos are currently part of the Noorderlicht Photofestival 2007 ?Acts of Faith? in The Netherlands, of the New England Photographers Biennial 2007 at the Danforth Museum of Art, and on exhibit at the Arsenal Center for the Arts for grant recipients. She will be exhibiting her work at the Chicago Cultural Center, and at Fotofest in Houston in 2008.