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coordinators
Diana Allan
Diana Allan founded LOL in July 2006. She has a doctorate in anthropology and film at Harvard and is the founder and co-director of the Nakba Archive, a testimonial project about the 1948 war, that has recorded 500 interviews on film with first generation Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Video documentaries include: Chatila, Beirut (2002); Nakba Archive (2006) and Still Life (2007). She is currently working on Photo48, a photo book, which will be published by Saqi Books next year.
Shereen Diab
Born in London, in 1976, Shereen is currently living and working in Beirut. She has both an MA in Psychology from the American University of Beirut, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Creative Arts Therapies; including Expressive Film-Making, from Vienna, Austria. She is now working in Beirut as current coordinator for Lens on Lebanon, as well as teaching Psychology, and running Expressive Arts workshops. Shereen also works with photography and painting. lensonlebanon@yahoo.com
Samar Maakaron
Born in Zahleh, Lebanon, in 1979, Samar is currently living and working in Beirut after graduating with a degree in graphic design in 2000 from the American University. In 2002, she established with a fellow designer a collective space known as 'Afas' from which she carried her work in many fields such as graphic design, scenography and event organization. In 2006, she acquired a Masters degree in community arts from the University of Goldsmith, London.
Rebecca Murray
she is a founding member and advisor for lens on lebanon, and works as a freelance journalist based in Tyre, Lebanon. Rebecca's previous career was in studio film production, where she coordinated logistics for film shoots in New York City. She holds an MA in International Affairs.
Mahmoud Zeidan
Mahmoud Zeidan is a Palestinian refugee born in Ein el Helweih camp in Lebanon. He studied English literature at the Lebanese university and pursued his graduate studies in Human Rights and Democratization at the University of Malta. Mahmoud co-directed the 'Nakba Archive' with Diana Allan - an oral history project documenting narratives of the Nakba from the first Palestinian refugee generation in Lebanon. He is currently active in defending human rights and the right of return of Palestinian refugees. Mahmoud also works with photography and film making, and is a founding member of Lens on Lebanon
Jamie Smith
This website was designed by Jamie Smith, a web editor currently working for a local authority in London. He has previously produced websites for Campaign Against the Arms Trade, Nakba Archive and International Solidarity Movement London.
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LOL would like to thank the following individuals for their support:
Mark Ajluni, Belinda Allan, Jessica Applebaum, Negar Azimi, Vatche Boulghourjian, Curtis Brown, Nayla Chacra, Ahmed Dailami, Matt Daw, Alireza Doostdar, Zeina Ghandour, Jo Glanville, Malu Halasa, Mazen Hashem & Solo Films, Hilary Isaac, Lara Jirmanus, Tania Kamal-Edin, David Tetzlaff, Firoze Manji, Rania Mattar, Dave Reed, Musaed al Saleh, Sandra al Saleh, Rasha Salti, Nitin Sawhney, Adam Shapiro, Muna Wehbe.
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facilitators
Mirene Arsanios
Mirene Arsanios is a freelance critic and a curator. She obtained a Masters in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths College, London in September 2007. She has
previously worked for MACRO, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome as an assistant curator and has contributed to various exhibition catalogues.
Marwa Arsanios
Marwa Arsanios is a visual artist. She recently participated in the group show Currents, Trinity Buoy Wharf, London. She has previously worked in Beirut as a freelance graphic designer and contributed to numerous publications. She is one of the founding partners of Né.à Beyrouth Communication. She obtained her MFA at Wimbledon, College of Art, University of
the Arts, London, in September 2007.
98weeks is an artist organization founded by Marwa Arsanios and Mirene Arsanios on the 25 April 2007. It is conceived as a research project that shifts its attention to a new topic every 98 weeks. It is based in Beirut and takes the Middle East as its context. The research will be carried out through specific events such as workshops, community work, seminars, publications and exhibitions. 98weeks works with a network of people from different parts of the world in order to create a platform for collective inquiry. www.98weeks.org
Rick Bajornas
Rick Bajornas graduated with a degree in photography from the Art Institute of Colorado, but it was in New York that he learned how to photograph. After working for Magnum Photos as a digital technician, he went on to
photograph at the UN Headquarters. He spent one year photographing in Ethiopia and has just moved to Tyre, Lebanon, to work as a freelance photographer. www.bajornas.net
Fadi Baki
A marsupial of dubious origin that has an education in both graphic design and filmmaking,
he freelances in illustration, animation and video- depending on the trade winds. He is currently in exile attempting to conjure up his first feature-length script using ancient magick and Shaolin breathing techniques
Michelle Davis
Michelle Davis has directed for the BBC Features and Documentaries Department for the last 10 years. She has covered a broad range of topics such as climate change, the South Shields Yemeni community and the alleged race riots of 1919 and 1930, community gardening initiatives in Brooklyn, Asian Fusion music in London and the history of Buckingham Palace garden and public parks. Michelle Davis writes, shoots, produces and directs and has documented personal journeys in Morroco and India. She is currently researching projects on democracy and the media in Afghanistan. miched@hotmail.co.uk.
Eric Gottesman
Eric Gottesman is a collaborative artist working with photography and video. For the last seven years, he has been working on a project with Sudden Flowers Productions, a children's art collective in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Together, they have produced imagery that describes how the children's lives have been affected by poverty and disease. They have exhibited and published the work locally in English and Amharic and recently toured a public art installation around Ethiopia.
Gottesman has exhibited and published his work from Ethiopia and from other projects in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and North America. His most recent exhibits were at Espace SD in Beirut, Lebanon, Bard College in New York, and Gallery Wedat in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He has lectured about his collaborative work at public health conferences, universities, non-governmental organizations and art institutions. His work has been supported by organizations including the Open Society Institute, the Opportunity Fund, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke and the Firelight Foundation. He recently started a project in Zibquin, Lebanon with lensonlebanon.org.
www.ericgottesman.net
Tanya Habjouqa
Tanya Habjouqa, born in Jordan, began working as a freelance photographer in the United States, documenting migrant communities and urban poverty for the Fort Worth Weekly. For the last five years, she has worked in conflict zones and documented migrant and domestic worker abuse and drug addiction in the Middle East. Her photographs have appeared in international publications and received two humanitarian awards for her coverage of the crisis in Darfur.
In addition to her photography-Habjouqa works as a freelance producer for UK Channel More 4 News, producing features on Hezbollah, Saddam Hussein's legal team, and gender issues in the Middle East.
Tamara Abdul Hadi
Tamara Abdul Hadi is an Iraqi-Canadian photojournalist. A self taught photographer, Abdul Hadi studied Graphic
Design at Concordia University in Montreal before moving to Dubai in 2004, where she worked as a photo editor
and photographer at Reuters news agency. Freelancing for the New York Times since 2006, Tamara is currently
based in Beirut where she is working on a number of projects.
Rania Matar
Originally trained as an architect at Cornell University, Rania Matar studied photography at the New England School of Photography and in Oaxaca Mexico with Magnum photographer Constantine Manos. She currently works full-time as a freelance photographer and focuses on the Middle East mainly in Lebanon. Her focus has been mostly on women and children, where she has been documenting the recent spread of the veil among Moslem women, life in the Palestinian refugee camps, and most recently the aftermath of war in Lebanon.
Rania has exhibited her work locally in several venues in the Boston area and nationally in juried and solo shows. Her work was recently published in B&W magazine as a recipient of an excellence award, and in Shots 92 magazine for the Documentary Project. This past summer her images were exhibited in Tucuman, Argentina in the “Secunda Bienal Argentina de Fotografia Documental”, and in Aleppo , Syria in the ninth Annual International Photography Gathering. Her project “The Veil: Modesty, Fashion, Devotion or Political Statement?” won honorable mention of the Berenice Abbott Prize in 2006. Her images won first prize in the photo contest “Beauty” by Women in Photography International in 2005, first prize at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery in 2005, and honorable mentions at the Santa Fe Center for Photography in 2006, the Silver Eye Center for Photography Fellowship 2005 and 2006, and the Golden Light Awards in both the “People and Portraits” and the “Social Document” categories in 2006. Her images were recently selected by Women in Photography International as winning images for “Turning Silver”.
Sheryl Mendez
Graduated with a dual B.A. in Political Science and Journalism, Rutgers University. Currently an M.S. degree candidate in International Affairs. One of the founding members of The Crimes of War Project - www.crimesofwar.org . Photography editor and researcher on the book, Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know - W.W. Norton & Co., New York/London published in 1999. Currently working on upcoming 2nd edition of the Crimes of War book. Contributing photojournalist to World Picture News. US News & World Report, New York Bureau's Editor of Photography. Prior to this, worked for Magnum Photos as Editor of Story Development and field research. Currently based between Beirut, Lebanon and Damascus, Syria.
Work published in: The London Sunday Times magazine, Nouvel Observateur, The Washington Post, Newsvine, Folha de S. Paulo (Brazil), ABC News, Associated Press, Yahoo!News, Maghreb Daily, News 24 South Africa, Jamaica Observer, The San Francisco Examiner, The Bangladesh Observer, Chosun Ilbo and radio reporting on This American Life, National Public Radio. Publications: Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know (W.W. Norton & Co., New York/London)
Exhibitons include: Los Angeles, California - Michael Dawson Gallery Peer Gallery in New York. Images Against War - Mass Graves, Iraq 2003, Gallery Lichtblick, Cologne, Germany. Faculty of History and Arts, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands - Photographs from Iraq - Gender and Political Violence - Ambiguities, Dilemmas, Challenges. Collaborative journal with the work of Sheryl Mendez and Shirin Neshat.
Maya Mikdashi
Maya Mikdashi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. She is co-director/producer of the award-winning documentary About Baghdad and a founding member of Incounter Productions. Maya is the assistant director of the multidisciplinary, multi-faceted research and documentary project on Arabs and Terrorism (arabsandterrorism.com). She is also director and editor of Notes on the War, a new video essay shot on location in Beirut during Israel's war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006.
Randa Mirza
A visual artist born in Beirut in 1978, and based in Lebanon, Randa graduated from the Lebanese Academy of fine arts (ALBA) with a degree in Advertising, before moving to Paris for two years where she studied fine arts at Paris 8 University. Her work, using digital photography and live video editing, reflects on wars and post-war situations: what is shown and hidden during warfare, but also what remains, transforms or changes, gets forgotten, or disappears after a conflict. Another aspect of her work is to question the role and means of the media as an important extension of a struggle and she is currently working on a photography project related to war, media and tourism.
Jan Mun
Jan Mun is a freelance photographer based in New York. Born in South Korea, she has been studying Asian female immigrants and identity in the New York City area, using video interviews and photographs. She has also organized photography workshops looking at identity issues in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, an all African-American town started by the ex-slaves of the Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Jessica Murray
Jessica Murray is the co-director of Al-liquindoi Photography Workshops, a documentary photography project based in Spain. Al-liquindoi organizes production workshops in various locations in Spain. Recently they have also organized projects in Palestine, Bahrain, Dubai , Jordan and Lebanon. The work made by the students in the workshops can be viewed in the online gallery www.al-liquindoi.com.
Simba Russeau
Simba Russeau is a photojournalist, writer and radio correspondent currently based in Beirut, Lebanon. Influenced by the reality of surviving seven years, as a youth, on the streets, she later taught herself photography and in 2002 Simba covered her first foreign assignment in East Timor. Since then she has reported from South Korea, Philippines, Haiti, Japan, the US and Lebanon. For four years she worked as an assignment editor for Pacifica Radio's Free Speech Radio News, a daily national and international radio news program. Simba's work has been published in Rolling Stone and Sowar Magazine. As a camera operator she has worked for PBS In the Life, Sundance and independent filmmaker Jon Alpert. Currently she is working on photo essays documenting homeless and displaced people around the world and Africans in Lebanon. www.archive.universaljou rnalist.com
Rania Stephan
Rania Stephan, born in Beirut , graduated with a degree in Cinema Studies from Latrobe University in Melbourne, Australia and a graduate degree in Cinema Studies from Paris 8 University, France. Her career in film production has been long and diverse: she has worked as a sound engineer, camera, editor, first assistant and producer with renowned filmmakers including Simone Bitton ( The Wall and Citizen Bishara) and Elia Suleiman ( Divine Intervention ).
Her filmography includes: Tribe (1993), Phaedra(s) (1994), Attempt at Jealousy (1995), Baal and Death (1997), My First Camera (1998), Train-Trains (Where's the Track ?) (1999), Arrest at Manara (2003), Kimo the Taxi (2003), Wastelands (2005), Lebanon/War (2006). She is currently working on a documentary titled The Three Disppearances of Suad Hosni , on the legendary Egyptian film star who passed away recently.
Akram Zaatari
Born in Saida in 1966, Akram Zaatari is an artist who lives and works in Beirut. Author of more than 40 videos, he has been exploring issues pertinent to postwar Lebanon, particularly the mediation of territorial conflicts and wars through television, and the logic of religious and national resistance. Co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation (Beirut), Zaatari has recently based his work on collecting, archiving and studying a photographic history of the Middle East.
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