Against Photography. A annotated history of the Arab Image Foundation has been co-organized by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) and the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), with the K21 Nordrhein-Westfalen and the Sharjah Art Foundation as partner organizations.
In 1997, Akram Zatari co-founded the AIF (Arab Image Foundation) with artists and photographers of his generation. The creation of the Foundation enacted a critical movement in image cultures in Lebanon, if not the Arab world. And at this present, it is an organisation that recognises the image as object and positions photography in a larger set of social practices.
The show stems from the interest in this critical intersection between archive and artistic practices. It also presents a subjective look of the artist at the evolution of the AIF, an institution that in its 20 year history has amassed over 50,000 images from the Middle East and North Africa. The Artist’s work engages directly with the issues which have coexisted within the AIF, while also pushing the boundaries of an expanded definition of photography and its function in society.
As Mark R. Westmoreland points out in his text*
The archaeological method of excavation provides a conceptual framework for Zaatari’s artistic practice, in which he digs into the past in order to place traces of past events in the present, thus finding new meaning. Therefore, it is possible to see this exhibition as a kind of an excavation, which spans the macro to the micro.
* The exhibition's catalogue (Korean version), page 49
12 routed aluminum plates, 4 sets of intaglio and chine-collé prints, 27 × 31 cm, each
medium-density fibreboard, dimensions variable
6 pigment inkjet prints on backlit UV cloth, 100 × 150 × 10 cm, each
twelve black-and-white portraits of Nadia Abdel Wahed photographed by Van Leo in Cairo, 1959. Printed full frame from direct scans of 120 film negative, presented in sequence, 9.5 × 9.5 cm, each. Courtesy of the AIF/Beirut and AUC/Cairo
HD video, 6 min
© National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Korea)