Katie, Brooklyn, New York, 2018
“I don’t think about what others do. I am in the moment with a human being in front of me, so we create the stage together. I collaborate with the women I photograph. I follow their lead and their emotions, and we both push the limits of our comfort zones as the session evolves. It is a process and I take the collaboration part very seriously. I want the people I photograph to feel comfortable, to trust me, to enjoy the process, and to feel that they are part of it. So whatever emotions they bring, I want to make sure I give them justice.”
As a Lebanese-born American
woman and mother, Matar’s cultural background, cross-cultural experience, and personal narrative inform her photography. She has dedicated her work to exploring issues of personal and collective identity, through photographs of female adolescence and womanhood. She works both in the United States where she lives and the Middle East where she is from, in an effort to focus on notions of identity and individuality all within the context of the underlying universality of these experiences.