The World Beyond What The Naked Eye Can See by Lara Zankoul Photography
Lara Zankoul is a Lebanese conceptual photographer that first entered the photography scene in 2008. Graduating from the American University of Beirut with a Masters in Economics, Zankoul turned to photography as a way to escape the everyday life of a cubicle in which she worked her first full-time job. She has been present at several local and international exhibitions such as the 2011 Women’s Art Exhibition (Lebanon) and the 2013 edition of the Festival Photomed (South of France). She has also won an award in the 2011 Shabab Ayyam Photography Competition.
She has confessed that her work is inspired by notably surreal and renaissance paintings, psychology and by observing people and society. Also, two of the photographers whose work have influenced her are Tim Walker and Annie Leibovitz. When asked about a personal or favourite quote, Lara Zankoul cites Elliot Erwitt “To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them”.
Lara Zankoul is best known for her surreal and fairy like storylines. Being a conceptual photographer means that her work visually illustrates an idea. Lara Zankoul recently stated the following for an interview with Style.com/Arabia: “My compositions are contemporary fairytales that explore the charm and mystery of the human psyche. Whimsical and playful, they represent an attempt to invent new worlds, to push against the boundaries of our reality, and escape the monotony of everyday life.”
Lara Zankoul is best known for her surreal and fairy like storylines. Being a conceptual photographer means that her work visually illustrates an idea. Lara Zankoul recently stated the following for an interview with Style.com/Arabia: “My compositions are contemporary fairytales that explore the charm and mystery of the human psyche. Whimsical and playful, they represent an attempt to invent new worlds, to push against the boundaries of our reality, and escape the monotony of everyday life.”
One of Lara Zankoul’s first projects was 365 which entailed the photographer to take a picture each day for a year. But it was a different project that made it to her solo exhibition in Ayyam Gallery of January 2013: The Unseen. The concept behind this project stems from the hypothesis that people and society both flourish in a dual reality. One that is tangible and can be seen with the naked eye, and another one, that, though hidden, is still present and recognizable to the trained eye. To better illustrate the concept of the unseen world, Lara Zankoul used water in her endeavor as a reference to the mysteries of the sea. She shares with us her efforts leading up to the project:
“I’ve been wanting to take above/underwater shots without any manipulation for quite some time. When I spontaneously found the right concept for it (the iceberg effect), I had to go for it. I spent around a month coming up with ways to execute what I had in mind: the only solution was to construct a water tank, with frontal glass, make it look like a room and I was ready to go. And that's what I did.
The message was very personal to me, yet it was quite universal. The series represents the dichotomy present in our lives: that of appearances versus reality. What's under the water represents the Unseen, or all that is hidden. What is above the water represents appearances. As I progressed in the project, this dichotomy became less clear and more ambiguous and the 2 parts merged into a whole, which we call society.”
The project took about 6 months to complete. Two to three months of rigorous scheduling, gathering props, choosing models and the right wardrobe, planning the right light in order to avoid reflection on the glass and so on. What glass are we talking about? The frontal glass of the water tank in which the shooting took place. There is no Photoshop in the photographs you will see below. The rigorous planning was followed by one and a half days of shooting. And then two more months were allocated to the process of choosing the right photographs and color correction.
The photographs of The Unseen are split into two parts: what is above the water is the world everybody perceives; what is underneath the water line is the other part of the puzzle, which exists, but is not always perceived. Let’s make a small exercise. In the second photograph you can see a woman under water, but there is nothing above it. The noone, as the title goes, stands for people that are present, but their voice cannot be heard and they are slowly suffocating from keeping everything bottled up.
Censorship is the third photograph in which a woman communicates using her eyes, because underwater her mouth is sealed by a starfish. The one in which a woman is pushing balloons under water stands for how lies cannot be hidden deep down, because they always resurface with greater force. Telling Lies seems like an appropriate name for the photo. Apparently, using balloons this way is also a common therapeutical practice to demonstrate the idea that pushing your problems deep down has the opposite effect, since they always resurface with greater force.
The World Beyond What The Naked Eye Can See by Lara Zankoul #Photography http://t.co/VKENmlwHUT http://t.co/sI1uQ7eP23 cc: @larazankoul
— Photography Office (@photoffice) June 5, 2014But we don’t want to give away all the clues. However, we are going to provide you with the name of the other photographs. It’s your turn to identify the idea behind it. Are you up for the challenge? If the answer is yes, share your findings with us in the comment section below.
