L’Enfant-Femme

“From our first meeting I sensed a kindred spirit in Rania Matar. We are both women of two worlds, striving to bridge the divides between cultures, both passionate about the rights of women and those who are disempowered. She grew up in Beirut and moved to America in the wake of civil war. I am Arab-American by birth, raised and educated in a Judeo-Christian society before leaving to work in the Middle East. I embraced Islam shortly before marrying a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, HM King Hussein of Jordan. Rania and I are two among millions for whom Western and Middle Eastern cultures are not mutually exclusive worldviews destined for confrontation. Rather, they combine to shape who we are and what we believe.

All this is exemplified in the beautiful and sensitive images in Rania’s stunning book, L’Enfant-Femme. These moving photographs evoke a fundamental sense of cross-cultural understanding. Matar strips away the confines of societal labels from both herself and the girls she photographs. She exposes the boundaries of American and Arab cultures in order to reconcile them. They are not simply American; they are not simply Arab; neither are they simply Muslim, Christian, nor Jewish. These girls are simply girls – but much more besides. These are images of girls at the point where they are beginning to become women – a powerful combination of youth, womanhood and beauty.”

– excerpt from the Introduction by Her Majesty Queen Noor