Akram Zaatari is a Lebanese artist and filmmaker born in 1966 in Saida. In the 1990s, he participated with other figures such as Rabih Mroué, Walid Sadek, Walid Raad, Jalal Toufic, Tony Chakar, Lamia Joreige, Paola Yacoub and Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, in the emergence of contemporary practices in postwar Lebanon. These practices were multidisciplinary and involved multiple strategies, including the use of archives, testimonies and archaeology. Since then, Zaatari has gained international recognition. His work was displayed in major exhibitions and biennales, including Documenta 12 in 2012, and his video Letter to a refusing pilot was showcased at the National Pavilion of Lebanon curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath at the 2013 Venice Art Biennale. He is present in the most prominent collections of contemporary art including, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Tate Modern, London, Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

In 1997, Akram Zaatari co-founded the Arab Image Foundation with Fouad Elkoury and Samer Mohdad. This non-profit organisation aims to gather and preserve photographs and visual documents from the Arab world and the Arab diaspora. Zaatari was involved in the acquisition of many collections from studio photographers. One of them was Hashem el Madani’s Studio Shehrazade in Saida. Zaatari and Madani grew an intense relationship of friendship and collaboration that originated in a very dense body of works, including the books Hashem el Madani: Studio Practices (2004), Hashem el Madani: Promenades (2007) and the film Twenty Eight Nights and A Poem (2015) that “distances itself from this archival impulse, moving away from the stability and sanctity of the object in favour of expansiveness, creating contemporary meaning through new contexts and approaches” (The Museum of Modern Art).

This series of photographs extracted by Akram Zaatari from El Madani’s fund question the notions of couples and gender. They are divided into three parts: newlywed men and women formally posing in a theatrical décor with fake curtains, surrounded by casual double portraits of women and men playing with poses and gestures eventually providing ambiguities regarding their relationships.