Photography from the Middle East receives fairly little attention in the United States, and our image of the region is fashioned by journalists covering conflicts that date back to colonial times. Women are invariably represented as veiled, oppressed, deprived of their freedom by a patriarchal society, or as an untouchable beauty with dark, penetrating eyes peering out from a chador. Between exoticism and cultural simplification, the Middle East of women is codified to the point of caricature.
The Howard Greenberg gallery is giving viewers the opportunity to revisit the construction of this myth by exhibiting photographs from the 1940s to the ‘60s. They were taken by Margaret Bourke-White, a pioneer of modern photojournalism, who in 1940 shot an in-depth report on Syria for the famous magazine LIFE. She documented the military interventions which contributed to the country’s construction, as well as the region’s architectural and cultural splendor: ancient sites, French and British regiments, villages, deserts, Bedouins and busy streets. Complementing the collection is another set of photographs shot by Ralph Crane, also for LIFE, in the early 1960s.
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil de la Photographie.
EXHIBITION
The Middle East Revealed: A Female Perspective
Margaret Bourke-White: Syria in 1940
A Selection of Photographs from LIFE Magazine
From April 18th to August 1st, 2014
Galerie Howard Greenberg
The Fuller Building 41 East 57 Street Suite 1406
New York, NY 10022
USA
Also current exhibition: Joel Meyerowitz – The Effect of France
