time, narrative and photography - zakieh
  When Zakieh introduced herself to the group, she said that she loved to laugh and sing - even if she was not good at it. When I asked her why she always removed her glasses when her picture was taken, she answered that she looked better without them. However, in her self-portrait her eyeglasses are prominently displaced, and in the absence of her face her glasses become a necessary mark of herself.
In her final project, a broad rumination on "the effects of the past on the present" Zakieh presents three possible roads leading to imprisonment. The first, perhaps most obvious route, begins with a crime and ends with the future suffering of the criminal's family.
The second triptych tells the story of how a rich man becomes imprisoned in poverty due to his drinking and gambling. The workshop participants at once understood that the subject was supposed to be rich. Fadi and I had apparently not picked up on the "obvious" hint of the suitcase-the mark of a successful businessman.
In the third and final triptych, Zakieh shows how in the future one is kept from realizing one's dreams and aspirations because as a Palestinian one is not allowed to work in Lebanon. For the first assigned exercise, Zakieh chose to represent the story of two childhood friends who take very different paths in life. The first child, who perhaps comes from a financially more comfortable home, begins by riding his bicycle past the children who must create or find their own toys. Of those children, one builds a narghileh, or water pipe. In the future, this child will have to leave school to work as a mechanic at a young age, while the child with the bicycle is afforded the opportunity to pursue his education.
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