Photographer #448: Rania Matar

Rania Matar, 1964, Lebanon/USA, is a documentary photographer who was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the USA in 1984. Her career started as an architect before studying photography at the New England School of Photography. She concentrates mainly on women and women's issues as identity and religion both in the US as in the Middle East. In 2009 she released the book Ordinary Lives and this spring her second monograph, A Girl and her Room, will be coming out. This series, inspired by her eldest daughter, focuses on teenage girls within their own private spaces. Both the forthcoming book and her younger daughter were the inspirations for her latest body of work entitled L'Enfant-Femme (the Child-Women). She portrays young teens and pre-teens without giving them instructions apart from not smiling. Due to the freedom the girls have to pose in their own way; they portray an array of emotions and clues to their true self. The angst, confidence and/or body language reveal their sense of selfhood and the developing sense of womanhood. As the teenagers still fluctuate between being a child and a women, Rania asks herself whether "they are meant to see themselves as little girls, teenagers or as young women?" Since 2002 she has also been taking photographs of her four children showing the various stages of their lives. The following images come from the series L'Enfant-Femme, Christian Arabs and Family Moments.

Website: www.raniamatar.com

Photographer #447: Brent Stirton

Brent Stirton, 1969, South-Africa, is a photojournalist and documentary photographer who focuses on issues related to conflict, health and the environment. He has traveled extensively to places as Timbuktu, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and India. He is the official photographer for the Global Business Coalition against Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Twice he visited the Ukraine, a country with the highest concentration of HIV+ people in Europe, to document the victims of Aids and the social workers and doctors who improve the lives of the infected. His goal was to humanize the disease through his photography and to lessen fear and prejudice against those who live with the disease. His work has received numerous awards amongst which are five awards from the World Press Photo Foundation and six from the Lucie Foundation. His images have been shown in a vast amount of exhibits including one at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and has been published in leading magazines as the National Geographic Magazine, Time, Newsweek and Stern. The following images come from the stories Tuareg Rebels Niger, Aids, Drugs & Uncertainty: Ukraine and Narco-wars in Afghanistan.

Website: www.brentstirton.com