Book Description

View From Inside is an expansive presentation of contemporary Arab photography, video, and mixed media art from the Middle East and North Africa. The book shows the works of 49 leading Arab artists from 13 different countries. The works reflect the emergence of photographic, video and digital art as important forms of creative visual expression in the Arab world since the 1990s. The artworks address a broad range of issues that the artists themselves have defined as important to the modern Arab experience. Four texts cover the early appearance of photography in the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-nineteenth century through photography's evolution as an integral part of the contemporary Arab art world: The author of the lead essay on contemporary photographic art is the pioneering curator and expert on classical Islamic art and contemporary Arab art, Karin Adrian von Roques. Ms. von Roques has worked in the Middle East for more than twenty years, bringing important contemporary Arab art to museum audiences in Europe, Asia and the United States. Essays on the history of Arab photographic expression have been written by Samer Mohdad, a well-known Lebanese photographer, writer and co-founder of the Fondation Arabe pour l'Image in Beirut. Dr. Claude W. Sui, Senior Curator of the Forum International of Photography at the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany and curator of exhibitions on nineteenth century photography in Arabia including To the Holy Lands: Mecca and Medina to Jerusalem. Mona Khazindar, Director General of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris looks at the development on the history of modern Arab photography and its relationship to contemporary art. Wendy Watriss, Senior Curator and Artistic Director for FotoFest International provides the philosophical overview of the book in her introduction.