Rania Matar recipient of Leica Woman Foto Project 2022
East Wing is proud to announce Rania Matar is one of three recipients of the Leica Woman Foto Project Award.
As part of the Leica Women Foto Project initiative, Leica granted three photographers a cash award of $10,000, a Leica SL2-S camera set, and exhibition at Fotografiska New York. In addition to the Award, the initiative expanded to provide three mentorships in partnership with VII Agency.
This year’s awardees: Rania Matar, Rosem Morton, and September Bottoms were selected by a diverse panel of judges ranging from award-winning photojournalists to renowned contributors to the world of photography. Each winner will be awarded $10,000, a Leica SL2-S camera with Leica Vario-Elmarit 24-70 ASPH lens, and a 4-week photography exhibition at Fotografiska New York. Beginning March 8th, the exhibition will also feature the work of this year’s Leica Oskar Barnack Award winner, Ana María Arévalo Gosen. To further amplify the female perspective, Leica will host the Leica Women Summit at Fotografiska New York on March 12th and the 13th, a 2-day event comprised of comprehensive multi-platform programs serving to inspire conversations on the photo industry and reframe the narrative.
“The third annual Leica Women Foto Project Award underscores our ongoing commitment to diversity in visual storytelling,” says Kiran Karnani, VP of Marketing for Leica Camera North America. “Our winners this year demonstrated extraordinary skill, grace, and bravery, creating works that are as daring as they are vital. With this year’s Award and the overarching initiative, we aim to illuminate visual storytellers through programs and resources that foster the development and amplification of the female perspective.”
Where Do I Go? Rania’s winning project explores issues of personal and collective identity through female adolescence and womanhood. A gripping and beautifully-shot examination of subjectivity and the female gaze, Matar portrays the raw beauty of her subjects: their age, individuality, physicality, and mystery, photographing them the way she, a woman and a mother, sees them, beautiful and alive.Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984. As a Lebanese-born American woman and mother, her cross-cultural experience and personal narrative inform her photography. Matar’s work has been widely exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Carnegie Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Rollins Museum of Art, and more. It is part of the permanent collections of several museums, institutions, and private collections. A mid-career retrospective of her work was recently on view at Cleveland Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum of Art, American University of Beirut Museum. Matar received a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2017 Mellon Foundation artist-in-residency grant, 2011 Griffin Museum of Photography Legacy Award, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowships in 2021, 2011 and 2007. In 2008 she was a finalist for the Foster Award at the ICA/Boston, with an accompanying solo exhibition. She published four books: SHE, 2021; L’Enfant-Femme,2016; A Girl and Her Room, 2012; Ordinary Lives, 2009.Rania Matar is represented by East Wing.
