Lalla Essaydi

Lalla Assia Essaydi (born 1956) is a Moroccan photographer known for her staged photographs of Arab women in contemporary art. She currently works in Boston, Massachusetts, and Morocco. Her current residence is in New York. Quotes "In my art, I wish to present myself through multiple lenses -- as artist, as Moroccan, as traditionalist, as Liberal, as Muslim. In short, I invite viewers to resist stereotypes." “When I started working, I started photographing women in amazing houses, but when I brought my work to the West, all people were seeing were the beautiful spaces – they weren't seeing the women and that was disappointing,” “I wish for my work to be as vividly present and yet as elusive as 'woman' herself,” “Not simply because she is veiled or turns away – but because she is still in progress.” “A lot of people still think that's the way we live, but as an Arab woman, I don't recognise myself in those paintings,” “That piqued my curiosity and made me think about my identity as an Arab woman, so in a way, I reencountered my own culture through Orientalist paintings.” External links