Rianna (With Mirror), Amshit, Lebanon, 2024.
A few years ago, Rania Matar returned to Lebanon, the country in which she was born but had fled nearly four decades earlier amid the civil war. She weaved through abandoned buildings alongside a young Lebanese woman, whom she intended to photograph for an upcoming project. Suddenly, the pair noticed something: graffiti scrawled across a crumbling wall, plaintively asking لوين روح؟ (Where do I go?). It was then that Matar decided the question would be the guiding force behind her new body of work.
Now, 50 years since the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, Matar is preparing to release Where Do I Go?, her most recent book of photographs published by Kaph Books. Throughout the book’s 100 images, we encounter dozens of women, peeking out from behind patterned curtains; traversing hollowed-out buildings; and resting in lush landscapes, often peppered with ruins and rubble. No matter their setting, these images foreground the resilience necessary to withstand the country’s fraught conditions. Perhaps more importantly, though, they unveil how much these young women must contend with their tumultuous context—and whether they ultimately decide to leave or remain in their homes.
At the heart of Where Do I Go? is a collaborative spirit. To produce these photographs, Matar worked closely with her featured subjects, teasing out how to visually capture their personal and collective stories. For some women, that meant asserting their presence in deserted buildings, including cinemas, theatres, and hotels. For others, it meant exposing their inner lives through intimate, tightly composed scenes, highlighting their gestures, facial expressions, and clothing.
“The photo session always evolves organically, as the women become active participants in the image-making process, presiding over the environment and making it their own,” Matar explains in a personal statement about the project. “Given the space to express themselves, they are willing to experiment and go places neither of us thought possible just moments earlier.”
There is, of course, a thematic throughline in Where Do I Go?, uniting each photograph in a shared history of strength, hope, conflict, and humanity. Still, these portraits don’t follow a strict formula, despite being gathered in the same collection. That’s precisely why we visit so many different locations throughout the book, ranging from the Mediterranean Sea and the craggy peaks of Mount Lebanon, to the traditional buildings of Beirut and the city’s many layers of destruction and abandonment.
“While my photographs may not provide solutions or closure, I hope they nevertheless invite the viewer to pause and find the beauty, the hope, the shared humanity, and the grace that still exist despite everything,” Matar adds. “They are my love letters to the women of Lebanon.”
Where Do I Go? accompanies a major exhibition of the same name, opening next spring at the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art in Bloomington, IN. Aside from Matar’s photographs, the monograph also contains scholarly essays and personal reflections by Leila Reichert, Kim Ghattas, Youmna Melhem Chamieh, and Georges Boustany, alongside a selection of vernacular Lebanese photographs from Boustany’s collection.
Where Do I Go? is currently available for preorder via Kaph Books’s website. The exhibition will be on view at the Eskenazi Museum from March 5 to August 2, 2026.
In her new photography book, Where Do I Go?, Rania Matar reveals how young Lebanese women have remained resilient after 50 years of civil war and unrest.
Fawzia (with her mother’s pink scarf), Bhamdoun, Lebanon, 2022.
Lara M., (Bullet Holes), Abandoned Zahle Cinema, Zahle, Lebanon, 2024.
Fawzia, Bhamdoun Synagogue (We Are All One), Bhamdoun, Lebanon, 2023.
Tara (In the Flowers), Bekaatat Kanaan, Lebanon, 2022.
Maya (Odalisque with Cat), Beirut, Lebanon, 2024.
Rianna, Chartoun, Lebanon, 2022.
Rania Matar: Where Do I Go? is currently available for preorder, and will accompany a major exhibition of the same name next spring.
Rhea S., Piccadilly Theater, Beirut, Lebanon, 2021. (Homage to Fouad El Khoury)
Aya (Draping), Gemmayze, Beirut, Lebanon, 2022.
Perla, Where Do I Go لوين روح, Kfarmatta, Lebanon, 2021.
Chermine, Hamra, Beirut, Lebanon, 2022.
Aya (Dancing), Beirut, Lebanon, 2022.
Petra, Holiday Inn Hotel Pool (the hotel has been destroyed since 1976 shortly after it was built), Beirut, Lebanon, 2021.
Rhea (On the Sandbags), Beirut, Lebanon, 2024.
