Rania Matar: Where Do I Go? لوين روح

Where Do I Go? لوينروح is Rania Matar’s photographic love letter to the women of Lebanon. 

2025 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Lebanese Civil War. As the country and its people reckoned with the legacy of its past, they also confronted the struggles of the present— economic instability, lingering reminders of the pandemic, undue violence across the region, and for many, the enduring pain of the Beirut Port Explosion. The precarity has led many to emigrate elsewhere.

Through it all, Matar has found hope and inspiration in Lebanon’s young women. Having left Lebanon during the Civil War in 1984, she knows well the difficult decision of whether to leave or to stay. 

Her arresting portraits affirm the presence, strength, and resilience of her subjects. Whether situated in an abandoned building or within the country’s natural landscape, history, place, and identity become one in her images. The women’s presence exudes out of the frame, claiming space— asking their audience to look at them, and to answer Where Do I Go?