Rania Matar

A Girl and Her Room

November 1 - December 2, 2012

What began as a personal investigation by Rania Matar to understand her own daughter became a broader investigation of a young girl's transition through adolescence to womanhood. In her series, A Girl and Her Room, Matar's portraits of teenage girls from the United States and the Middle East offer an insider's perspective of not just who these young women are, but the physical spaces that prove to be extensions of their identities. Matar writes, "As soon as the girl was in her own surrounding, I could almost see the "real" person. She was amongst her stuff, in her comfort zone; she could just be herself and she just fit in there, as if the room was an extension of her and she was an extension of her room."

Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the US in 1984.  She studied photography at the New England School of Photography and the Maine Photographic Workshops.  Matar has won numerous awards, including the Top 100 Distinguished Women Photographers by Women in Photography, and was a finalist for the Foster Award at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.  She teaches photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and in refugee camps in Lebanon.