MARYAM AK - PHOTOGRAPHER/RESEARCHER
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Slow is a project of soft resistance, and is inspired by some recurring thoughts that I will share with you here. The Middle East is usually associated with war and violence, to non-Middle Eastern audiences, the images of death and destruction are exciting and interesting and in a way all too common as visuals with which to represent the peoples of this region. But why is it that we are never seen relaxing by the sea, or just relaxing in a general sense. Why are we always associated with tension, never with ease? I have always thought about these questions. Why is it ok for a ‘Westerner’ to be shown simply relaxing, happy, smiling but never an ‘Arab’? An Arab is usually shown frustrated, angry, revolutionary, and women are always waiting to be saved. None of these narratives are new, in fact they are as old as 16th-century colonialism, and that is because the images of the Middle East have usually been curated and produced outside of the region, with very little space for internal self-representation that speaks to western and non-western audiences. As recently as a year ago, I received a copy of aperture magazine, in it were multiple pages on queer identity, black identity, many many pages of Europeans and Americans doing beautiful things, and then one token article about the Arab Spring. This copy was published in 2021. The Arab Spring took place in 2011. Do we not exist in the interim? Are we only good for violence and revolution?
Because of these recurring thoughts, I have always had this deep desire to depict the mundane, or something beyond the mundane, this sense of luxuriating in one’s own laziness. That is, the extreme opposite of tension and war, the imagery of peoples enjoying and basking in a leisurely time and space, despite the chaos that overwhelms us. Recently I came across a quote that said “rest is the softest form of resistance.” It is the message of anti-capitalism. Colonial thinking has traditionally rested on the notion that civilized peoples were seeking to save barbaric natives from their idleness. That production means progress. But I find that one of the most beautiful things about growing up in Jordan, is the slowness with which people choose to go about their day. Not ideal in many ways, but at least one is able to take the time to sample the simple pleasures of life; taking in the smell of Jasmine at night. Sharing lunches and dinners. Lounging for hours. Belonging within a community.
Yes the Middle East is an ongoing tragedy. A soap opera of epic proportions. Yes political turmoil and wars are constant. Yes, life here is difficult. But with such proximity to death, comes a profound awareness of life, of the sense of being alive. A throbbing desire to experience beauty and to exist fully. Tragedy porn has never appealed to me. We are amorphous and multi-dimensional, taking many forms. This project is an attempt to show some of these other forms. - to go to the opposite extreme, to celebrate idleness, and slowness, to show us not as victims, but simply as humans, taking a break from it all.
Here I am mostly focusing on women, partly because this project makes me think of my own mother and her unrelenting defense of laziness. In our home both of my parents encouraged the lazy in us. My father always told me, laziness is sweeter than honey. What are we all running towards anyway? Our own death? Why not take it slow and enjoy it while we’re here? This ability to simply be, without trying to constantly produce is a feminine energy, but it has now come to be associated with a sense of guilt, yet to luxuriate in one’s own self is the most satisfying of past times and, to reiterate the quote above- the softest form of resistance, so I have mostly focused on women lounging, resisting, existing.
There are certain moments during ones day when the body exist not for the objectification of others but simply as a space in which one exists, it is in these moments I personally feel mostly closely ‘embodied’. These are the moments that I am most interested in capturing . that is, the moments when we are not performing for nayone but ourselves. Womens bodies in the middle east in particular have been subjected to a relentless barrange of critisim and analysis, as though it were an object to be studied, remolded, reconsidered, and not a sacred home for the soul, a perishable material.
The term documentary photography is to me an uncomfortable one because in my mind to document, is to create distance between the photographer and the object, whereas my practice is about closeness, intimacy, and making personalizing whatever braoder, or larger history, or story I am trying to tell, so that I, we, are able to better relate to it and understand it. Since my background is in political and military history, my photograohy has always tried to personalize these histories, to tell the stories of the individuals living them, that is the voice that has been lost over and over again in most historical accounts. As someone who identifies as an Arab female I only know how to relate to my female body, this territory that has been subjugated to countless ? both by foreigners who seek to liberate it from oppression, and by our communities who seek to oppress it lest it push too far against the accepted ‘social norms’
Slow is about taking pleasure in ones own body, that is, ones very exisitence not as a performative act for others, but simply for the sake of pleasure, joy, beauty, relaxation. In doing so what I am trying to say is that lounging, relaxing and indulging are by their very nature acts of resistance. Resistance to consumption (capitialist logic), resistance to unnessecary overproduction. Slowness is rooted rooted in our culture, which I have always felt to be unhurried and uninterested in yielding to the pressure to belong to production-oriented societies. And proudly so.
I want to document women in their most intimate spaces, here I am mostly focusing on women, partly because this project makes me think of my own mother and her unrelenting defense of leisure. I want to document women in their most intimate spaces.
In our home both of my parents encouraged the lazy in us. My father always told me, laziness is sweeter than honey. What are we all running towards anyway? Our own death? Why not take it slow and enjoy it while we’re here? This ability to simply be, without trying to constantly produce is a feminine energy, but it has now come to be associated with a sense of guilt, yet to luxuriate in one’s own self is the most satisfying of past times and, to reiterate the quote above- the softest form of resistance, so I have mostly focused on women lounging, resisting, existing.