Archeology, 2017

The work Archeology evokes, at once, the excitement and disappointment of an archeologist upon the excavation of an artifact, which misses crucial parts. It is based on a glass plate found in Tripoli by a photography collector named Mohsen Yammine in a flooded studio. The original glass plate represents the portrait of an athlete photographed by Tripoli-based Antranick Anouchian (1908 - 1991). Zaatari applied layers of dirt; metal and broken glass transforming it into an unearthed artifact. The object has been enlarged to match Zaatari’s excitement at his first encounter with the plate while looking through Yammine’s collection in 1998.

A Photographer's Shadow, 2017

Shadows are effects caused by light. They are like binding agents, in the sense that they tie distinct elements one to another. 

At a time when it was uncommon to own a camera for private use, one of the recurring patterns that appears in family photographs across the world is the shadow of the photographer falling on his subjects. Camera users, told to keep the sun behind them while taking pictures for better results, were often unaware that their silhouette overshadowed the scene they were trying to capture. In this series Zaatari re-photographed the shadows of photographers that appear in negatives and prints, shifting the viewer’s attention away from the scene, focusing on areas of the pictures where the photographer merges with the photographed, or what could have been an early form of shadow selfie.