Akram Zaatari: The End of Love
— The Arts Club, Dubai 25 November 2021 — 06 March 2022

The Arts Club Dubai presents works by Akram Zaatari in the Staircase Landing exhibition space. The exhibition focused on several key motifs in Zaatari’s oeuvre, drawn from the historic archives of Middle Eastern commercial photographers. Zaatari is co-founder of the ground-breaking and artist-driven Arab Image Foundation, dedicated to the study of archives and photography in the Arab world. His work pursues interconnected themes and practices related to excavation, political resistance, the lives of former militants, the legacy of an exhausted left, the circulation of images in times of war and the memories of lives lived. 

In 1999 Zaatari began working with veteran Lebanese photographer Hashem El Madani (1928-2017), whose Studio Sheherazade was founded in 1953 in Saida, southern Lebanon. El Madani amassed over 500,000 images in his career, all taken in his theatrical studio. The End Of Love featured 48 such photographs. Most capture newlywed couples, though some show friends or single figures. Highlighting the tension between individual sitters and the rituals of studio photography, poses and props recur across numerous photographs, but the images nonetheless reflect the particular personalities and relationships of the sitters. Dress is central to social identity; whilst pairs of men and women appear in matching suits or dresses, El Madani later recalled that he provided plastic flowers and white gloves for the wedding photographs, which were staged a week after the ceremony. Asked by Zaatari to define the photographer’s mission, El Madani responded: “A portrait has to make the subject beautiful”. The End of Love paid homage to this gesture, whilst it also subtly alluded to the passing of the time as the collected images documented an elusive moment in history.