photo beirut

New issue of Middle East Report - People Power

 People Power: Egypt.Sudan.Tunisia.

The Spring 2011 issue of Middle East Report is available now.

Subscribe to read all the articles and see the photos.

PEOPLE POWER

"Revolution is a weighty word, one as freighted with past disappointments as with hope for the future. The fate of the midwinter political revolutions in the Arab world is far from determined, as forces of counter-revolution have rallied. But, along with army officers and lords of finance, any balance sheet must also account for another actor -- the peoples of the region. "People Power," the spring 2011 issue of Middle East Report, documents their inspiring struggles.

Mona El-Ghobashy offers a magisterial close reading of the crucial four days -- January 25-28 -- that transformed a protest into an uprising and then into a revolutionary situation in Egypt. With tactics learned from a decade of clashes with police, ordinary Egyptians overthrew an extraordinarily strong regime.

Ahmad Shokr tells the story of Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the Egyptian revolution, from January 28 to February 11, date of President Husni Mubarak's resignation. In the square, he argues, the pro-democracy protesters made the kind of society they want to live in. Ted Swedenburg introduces the "troubadours of revolt" whose music entertained the insurrectionists and exhorted them onward. Their domestic foes, of course, have powerful foreign backers. Katherine Hawkins details the tight relationship of successive US administrations with the torture masters inside Mubarak's regime. As Peter Hart demonstrates, the American media has glossed over this sorry record.

Middle East Report interviews Tunisian labor leaders about the participation of unions in the first great success in the season of Arab revolts. Edward Thomas reports on the people's referendum that ushered in the new republic of South Sudan.

Also featured: Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt examine rising violence against Iraqi women, eight years after the invasion sold partly as a war of women's liberation; Lara Deeb reflects on popular treatments of Hizballah; Zachary Lockman reviews a new book on Israeli nationalism; and more."

Subscribe to Middle East Report or order individual copies online here.


Middle East Report is published by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a progressive, independent organization based in Washington, DC. Since 1971 MERIP has provided critical analysis of the Middle East, focusing on political economy, popular struggles and the implications of US and international policy for the region.

 

 

Reflecting on photos of Egypt's revolution

Last night I participated in an online salon hosted by BagNewsNotes called "Assignment Egypt: Analyzing News Photos from the 18 Day Revolution."  Other participants were David Campbell, Laura el-Tantawy, David Degner, Loret Stienberg, and Nathan Stormer. Everyone made enlightening comments.

The talk revolved around a series of photos pulled together by Michael Shaw (editor of BagNewsNotes). Although I believe that picking apart the details in an individual photo to try to discern meaning usually distracts from the larger issues of how the system of photojournlism creates a particular experience of our world, this exercise did help focus our comments.

I can't sum up or accurately quote what people said (there will be an archived version online soon if you'd like to listen). So I'm just putting out here a few thoughts on the subject.

Recently I browsed through thousands of photos for the next issue of Middle East Report (Spring 2011) on the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. I was struck by how certain locations and certain tropes dominated the coverage. In Egypt, as anyone could guess, Tahrir Square in Cairo was the central location of a majority of the images. More people were demonstrating in Tahrir, as a massive group, than anywhere else. It felt like the center of the revolution and probably was. But I also wonder how much it was constructed by the media as the most crucial event when there were actually important moments happening elsewhere too.

One example is the industrial town of Mahalla el-Kubra. Large-scale labor organizing and strikes at the textile factory, Misr Spinning and Weaving Company, have been ongoing for about a decade. It was the labor movement's long and hard work in Egypt that helped pave the way for the revolution that ousted President Mubarak on February 11. The Mahalla el-Kubra workers protested in February just as people did in Cairo, but I could not find professional photos of these events.

Photos of organized labor protests in the provinces would not have fit well into the dominant media framework of a leaderless youth rebellion spurred by Facebook and Twitter converging on a visually compelling central Cairo square. I also found it interesting that the characterization of the protestors as mostly young and tech-savvy fell apart the more I looked at the photos. They revealed a vast diversity of people from all sectors of society (as far as one can tell these things from visible details, which can be misleading).

Certain tropes emerged from the photographic coverage: distant shots of masses, groups of women (most often with covered heads), people chanting vigorously, Muslims and Christians holding tokens of their faith together, tanks, protestors cleaning up, rocks being thrown, flags being waved, placards held aloft (as well as children). All this happened, but with the repetition of these themes over and over the revolution ends up being described in a particular way -- basically as all acts of protest with only hints of the important, unseen, work of organizing logistics, mobilzing people, crafting political demands, and creating relationships.

There is pressure on photographers to be where the most dramatic action is occuring, which has the effect of corralling them together in one location. Plus, society rewards photographers (in the form of audience praise, awards, funding, promotion) who are able to create iconic photos that can stand in for an entire event. Iconic photos are most often abstract -- that is, they don't show too many particular details that would anchor the image in a concrete moment.

I wanted to see more photos that described the texture of life during these 18 days and shots from other neighborhoods of Cairo and other parts of Egypt. I was also curious if anyone, probably a documentary photographer rather than photojournalist, followed just one person or one group throughout the 18 days but have not seen this.

I did find some shots that showed something a bit different, such as photos by Maha Maamoun of graffiti and the ephemeral pieces of paper and documents that circulated around Tahrir, the sinks set up in the square by a plumber by Yasser Alwan, many shots of people reading newspapers in the encampment by Timothy Kaldas, people charging cell phones on a power strip commandeered from a travel agency shop, artists setting up shop to make signs. My dilemma in choosing photos for Middle East Report was that I needed to convey a broad sense of the revolution in only a handful of photos and thus could not include as many detail shots as I would have liked.

As consumers of news we need all kinds of photos -- from the iconic and abstract to those that capture humble details. But ultimately what I find most interesting is trying to understand how the whole system of photojournalism constructs the events that are photographed, guides what is considered worth photographing, and how this shapes our understanding of the world.

New issue of Middle East Report - Iran-Iraq War 30 Years Later

 

Available Now:

Middle East Report 257  Winter 2010

The Iran-Iraq War 30 Years Later

As photo editor of MER, I would like to point out the powerful photos by Alfred Yaghobzadeh (as seen on the cover here) of the Iran-Iraq war, as well as great photos by Manca Juvan, Mohammad Kheirkhah, Yahya Ahmed, and Isabel Ellsen among others.

Press Release:
From 1980 to 1988, Iran and its western neighbor Iraq fought one of the bloodiest and most futile wars of the late twentieth century. The precise number of fatalities is unknown, but certainly reaches into the hundreds of thousands. And, as war retrospectives inevitably point out, neither side gained an inch of territory. Yet, as argued in the winter 2010 issue of Middle East Report, 'The Iran-Iraq War 30 Years Later,' it is not quite right to conclude that this 'senseless' conflict left no legacy but death and destruction.

Joost Hiltermann, author of A Poisonous Affair, about the Iraqi chemical attack upon Halabja in 1988, surveys the landscape and finds that the war did not thwart the respective ambitions of Iran and Iraq so much as it delayed their pursuit. For the Kurds of Iraq, the war was a disaster and, eventually, an opportunity. For Turkey, the Gulf monarchies and the United States, it has meant enduring nervousness over the balance of power in this most strategic of world regions.

A war so long and taxing, requiring such extensive social mobilization, by necessity transformed the political economies of the combatant states, as well as states in the immediate vicinity. Nida Alahmad and Arang Keshavarzian explain how the war reordered the Iraqi and Iranian regimes; accelerated the physical connection of Baghdad and Tehran to hinterlands and rural areas further afield; rerouted oil flows; reallocated control of key revenue streams; and built entirely new institutions, such as the welter of social welfare funds in the Islamic Republic. Kevan Harris fleshes out the crucial role of one such welfare organization, the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee. Pete Moore demonstrates why Kuwait fared poorly and Jordan modestly well amidst the conflagration.

The eight-year war also left an indelible imprint upon cultural production in both countries. Iraqi novelist and poet Sinan Antoon tells the story of the 'Victory Arch,' the gargantuan crossed swords erected by Saddam Hussein’s regime to commemorate what it called a great triumph. In post-Saddam Iraq, the arches are on a list of monuments targeted for demolition.

Also featured: Jacob Mundy measures the fallout of November’s “48 hours of rage” in Western Sahara; Vijay Prashad reviews the history of Indian-Israeli relations; and more.

Subscribe to Middle East Report or order individual copies and follow MERIP’s ongoing coverage of contemporary affairs online.

"Running Dry" -- new issue of Middle East Report

The latest issue of Middle East Report is out -- it explores the topic of water scarcity.

This issue uses photographs from a variety of great photographers but I'd like to single out Andy Spyra (we used his evocative photo of a Palestinian farmer inspecting water tanks in a village near Bethlehem). I just found out that he was chosen by Photo District News as one of their 30 "new and emerging photographers to watch" this year.  Eman Mohammed in Gaza also makes PDN's 30 list. Congratulations Andy and Eman!

Subscribe to Middle East Report or order individual copies at MERIP’s website. Here's the press release:

Middle East Report 254  

Spring 2010

RUNNING DRY

The Middle East is running out of water. It is a statement that seems both banal and unduly apocalyptic. Desert covers most of the region, and many countries exhausted their renewable freshwater supply decades ago. Yet water runs freely from the tap in most thickly populated areas, and the “water wars” widely predicted by spy shops and think tanks have never been fought. Such conflicts are not on the horizon. But as the spring 2010 issue of Middle East Report, “Running Dry,” demonstrates, the region has indeed entered a new water era whose consequences for ordinary people could be no less tragic.

In general, the arid countries of the Middle East have sought to ameliorate water shortages by enhancing supply rather than managing demand. Mega-projects like the Great Manmade River in Libya or Toshka in Egypt are aimed at expanding arable land. At the same time, as per the famous argument of Tony Allan, states have imported “virtual water” -- food and other water-intensive products -- effectively to hide the natural limits of indigenous supply and technocratic wizardry from the public. Historian George R. Trumbull IV shows how oil wealth has also been used to mask water poverty.

One well-known mega-project is Turkey’s Southeast Anatolia Project, which, as water expert Hilal Elver chronicles, has bumped up against rising costs and the vocal complaints of countries downstream on the heavily dammed Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. But grandiose dreams live on elsewhere, as sociologist Lizabeth Zack reports from the shores of the Dead Sea in Jordan. Perhaps the strangest story, as historian Toby Jones documents, is Saudi Arabia, where the regime essentially drained the water-rich Eastern Province to retrieve the oil underneath -- and then irrigated vast circles of desert near the Empty Quarter. Of the countries that already face water stress, the worst off are those like Yemen that rely on groundwater for both agricultural and household use. From the northern highlands, Gerhard Lichtenthaeler surveys some local water management efforts that have staved off conflict in the absence of coherent national water policy.

Also featured: Kevan Harris examines the debate over subsidy reform in Iran; Ewan Stein interviews the spokesman of Egypt’s Gama‘a Islamiyya about the group’s future after armed insurrection; Robert Vitalis ruminates on Western books about Saudi Arabia; and more.

Representing the Middle East: Looking for the everyday

This past week I participated in an interesting "webinar" about stereotypes in photographic representation of the Middle East through Open-i, which is an online photojournalism education network. Some of the audience members are involved in a World Press Photo course for photographers in the Middle East and North Africa. The other presenters were Alexandra Avakian (National Geographic photographer) and Laura Junka (photographer and PhD student in cultural studies in London). Rula Halawani (photographer based in Jerusalem) was to be there too but unfortunately couldn't attend. Paul Lowe (former Magnum photographer, now with Panos) was the organizer and moderator.

My comments revolved around how in order to understand something of the politics of photographs we need to know how they are constructed by various political, social and cultural processes. I also mentioned how photojournalism over the past 50 years or so has come to more and more emphasize the dramatic moment, the emotional story, and artistic framing and composition.

The problem with this I think is that the quieter moments, the mundane, the everyday, are often left out. But it’s on that level of daily life where the big political and structural forces of oppression, poverty, discrimination, or occupation, affect most people.

Even if we are not in positions to affect the structure of forces that produce the stereotypes, we can still promote the creation of new and different photographic work and find ways to help audiences, teachers, and editors appreciate different visions and visual styles, like Alexandra, Laura and Rula do.

I think Rula  was effective in showing this with her project "Intimacy” where we see the hands of Palestinians and Israeli soldiers handling ID cards and bags at checkpoints.

She doesn’t show faces or dramatic interactions, strong emotions or conflict. She captures the daily, normal tensions of living under occupation, which I think says a lot more about most Palestinian’s lives than photos of boys throwing stones, as important as those are too. Rula's project confronts stereotypes because the images don’t fit into the standard conventions of photos of the Middle East.

Alexandra's photo of a man selling fish in Gaza in 1993 while an Israeli soldier jumps out of his jeep to chase stone-throwing Palestinians also gets at what I'm talking about.

Caption: Gaza City, Gaza, July 1993: A man sells fish while an Israeli soldier jumps out of his truck to chase Palestinians who had been throwing stones. Credit: Alexandra Avakian

Normal life continues during conflict, as seen here, but is often not depicted. This photo is not about contrasts or surprising juxtapositions. We can see from the man's demeanor that this is just a part of trying to live life in Gaza. Israeli military actions were ongoing and closely intertwined with daily life for Palestinians. Alexandra told us that most of the photos in her new book Windows of the Soul: My Journeys in the Muslim World, were rejects -- not used at the time. They are complex and layered, maybe too much so for the prevailing conventions, especially in the late 1980s through the 1990s.

Laura spoke eloquently about the difficulties of photographing Palestinians as neither terrorists nor victims. She spent the summer of 2003 taking photos of Palestinians at leisure as a way to get beyond these tropes. But at the same time she was careful to point out that violence and occupation were still always part of everyone's lives and evidence of that lingers in the photos. She explained that in this photo of a family at the beach there are layers of important information that are only available through explanatory captions.

Caption: Summer at the beach in Gaza, 2003. Credit: Laura Junka

The family has borrowed this tent from their neighbors who received it from the Red Cross when their house was bulldozed by the Israeli government in retaliation for one son's involvement with violent resistance to occupation. Knowing this adds a whole new dimension to the scene, creating a poignant and complex sense of joy mixed with sorrow.

The emphasis in photography of the Middle East is usually on conflict and contradiction, on up-close confrontations between individuals. And of course, as in most photography, there is an emphasis on depicting people.

But there are other visual modes to powerfully depict realities the region. For example see a double page spread in the most recent issue of Middle East Report where we used photos of road blocks by Dirk-Jan Visser.

 

Blocked by Dirk-Jan Visser.

Here is the text I wrote to go with the photo sequence:

"Foregoing the usual depiction of Israel and Palestine as a site of dramatic confrontations between individuals, Dirk-Jan Visser has chosen instead to reveal a more mundane and insidious aspect of Israeli power. Photographing some of the more than 500 road blocks throughout the West Bank in a repetitive and neutral style, without the embellishments of unusual camera angles or clever compositions, these seemingly innocuous places add up to a typology of obstacles, attesting powerfully to an extreme disruption of Palestinian life."

Although stereotypes and conventions of depicting the Middle East are still a problem, I do see more and more photographers pushing the boundaries, looking for new visual styles. Some are also finding ways to visualize structural political problems (the road blocks typology is an example) and to expand the repertoire of images of the region in order to more fully represent the multiplicity of people's identities and experiences.

Apartheid and Beyond - new issue of Middle East Report

The latest issue of Middle East Report is now available. Below is the blurb about the contents. Subscribe to Middle East Report or order individual copies at MERIP’s website. Included in the issue is a photo essay on road blocks by Dirk-Jan Visser in addition to the usual great work by talented photographers.

Middle East Report 253  Winter 2009

APARTHEID AND BEYOND

“Apartheid” is a word bomb. It explodes upon the page, laying bare memories of the regime of racial discrimination that prevailed in South Africa until 1994. So it was no small thing when the South African Human Sciences Research Council issued a report in 2009 concluding that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip is a “colonial enterprise that implements a system of apartheid.” The winter 2009 issue of Middle East Report, “Apartheid and Beyond,” asks what it means that such language is gaining currency and whether it holds promise for bringing peace to the strife-torn land of Israel-Palestine.

As political geographer Oren Yiftachel demonstrates, it is increasingly difficult to speak of separate political systems in the country, a state of Israel “side by side” with a Palestinian proto-state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. Rather, settlements, bypass roads and walls are creating one Israeli system of rule from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. But different groups of people living under that system have very different sets of rights and prerogatives. Anthropologist Julie Peteet traces the genealogy of the comparison between the post-1967 occupation and South African apartheid, finding in the differences between the two experiences reason to look for a new language to talk about Israel-Palestine.

One key difference is in the realm of labor: Whereas in white-ruled South Africa, the country’s economy was built on the backs of black workers, Israel is no longer dependent on the toil of Palestinians. Economist Jennifer Olmsted measures the growth of unemployment in the Occupied Territories and explains why the jobs have disappeared. There is also severe inequality within Israel, as Monica Tarazi shows in her essay on the dispossession of the Bedouin of the Naqab. Global protest against these inequalities is increasingly taking the shape of calls for various types of boycott. Ursula Lindsey reports on the efforts of Egyptian intellectuals to enforce a cultural boycott, as well as “anti-normalization.”

Also featured: Nazanin Shahrokni inquires into why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, not known as a friend of freedoms for women, nominated three women as cabinet ministers; Rola Abimourched investigates working and living conditions for migrant domestic workers in Jordan; and more.
---

Middle East Report is published by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a progressive, independent organization based in Washington, DC. Since 1971 MERIP has provided critical analysis of the Middle East, focusing on political economy, popular struggles and the implications of US and international policy for the region.

New issue of Middle East Report out now - The US in the Middle East

The latest issue of the excellent quarterly magazine Middle East Report is out now. Ok, I'm biased, being the photo editor, but it is widely respected for its analysis and I do think the photos are fantastic overall.

Photographers whose work appears in this issue include: Karim Ben Khelifa, Balazs Gardi, Eros Hoagland, Luiz Maximiano and Stephanie Keith.

In this issue be sure to check out the illuminating book review by Waleed Hazbun on US foreign policy towards the Middle East.

If you're going to the Middle East Studies Association conference in Washington, DC this weekend, stop by the MERIP booth in the book exhibit to say hello (and get issues of the magazine).

[Subscribe to Middle East Report or order individual copies online.]

Middle East Report 249
Winter 2008

SHRINKING CAPITAL: THE US IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The Bush administration entered office in 2000 determined to extend the
global dominion of the United States into "a new American century." Yet as
President George W. Bush prepared to depart the White House, the National
Intelligence Council released a report surmising that Washington "will have
less power in a multipolar world than it has enjoyed for many decades." The
winter 2008 issue of Middle East Report, "Shrinking Capital: The US in the
Middle East," examines the Bush-era changes in US regional policy -- and the
continuities with the past -- that have left Washington's clout diminished.

As Yahya Sadowski writes, the Bush administration's go-it-alone spirit -- 
and refusal even to speak to regional actors it does not like -- wound up
sparking a rash of diplomatic initiatives undertaken by US allies without US
approval or participation. Political scientist Waleed Hazbun situates the
Bush failures, which have caused such great damage to the Middle East, in
the historical sweep of US grand strategy and identifies a worrisome lack of
fresh thinking on the subject in the tomes of the Democratic foreign policy
establishment.

It is important to recall the legacies of the Philippines and Vietnam, as
Laleh Khalili writes, when evaluating the newness of Bush-sanctioned torture
and, for that matter, the US military's current focus on counterinsurgency.
Jason Brownlee finds more disturbing echoes of Vietnam in the 2008 field
manual covering "stability operations" -- occupation and militarized nation
building by another name. And, as sociologist Louise Cainkar demonstrates,
the draconian post-September 11 program of detention and deportation of
Arabs and Muslims could not have occurred so easily without the history of
anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment in the US.

Cultural historian Melani McAlister offers a different lesson in her essay
on the global engagement of American evangelicals: Their adoption of the
language of human rights to highlight persecution of Christians in Africa,
Asia and the Middle East has simultaneously drawn upon Islam-bashing themes
and pushed the activism of many evangelicals in a more liberal and less
parochial direction.

Also featured: Sandra Beth Doherty looks at why so many women in Lebanon go
under the knife; Tamir Sorek reviews Aziza Khazzoom's Shifting Ethnic
Boundaries and Inequality in Israel; and more.

---

Middle East Report is published by the Middle East Research and Information
Project (MERIP), a progressive, independent organization based in
Washington, DC. Since 1971 MERIP has provided critical analysis of the
Middle East, focusing on political economy, popular struggles and the
implications of US and international policy for the region.

60 years of the Universal Human Rights Declaration - photo slide show

Oeil Public, a French photo agency that I like to use for excellent photos of the Middle East, has a poignant and compelling slide show commemorating 60 years of the UN's Universal Human Rights Declaration. As you might imagine, from a photojournalistic/documentary agency, the photos almost all show violations of (not respect for) human rights. It's powerfully done. I rarely sit through online slide shows, but this one was riveting (the music adds a sense of urgency). Just click on the link above and it will start up.

One of the photographers whose work appears in the slide show is Karim Ben Khelifa, whose photos I use occasionally for Middle East Report, and who focuses on Islam and the Arab world.

Politics of Youth: New issue of Middle East Report out

The latest issue of Middle East Report, Winter 2007, is out. I wrote about my work finding photos for this issue recently, in this post.

 

Here's the press release:

Middle East Report 245
Winter 2007

THE POLITICS OF YOUTH

In many countries of the Middle East, as in other developing regions, young people between the ages of 15 and 24 make up a fifth or more of the population. These youth face serious socio-economic problems, including unemployment, under-employment and delayed marriage, but not the least of their burdens are the expectations and anxieties of their elders. In recent decades, indeed, youth have come to be seen as a problem in and of themselves. "The Politics of Youth," the winter 2007 issue of Middle East Report, measures the image against reality.

Anthropologist Ted Swedenburg sketches the "imagined youths" that preoccupy policy planners and pundits in the Middle East and the West. Youth are perceived both as people who need to be protected -- from radical political Islam or from "vulgar" popular culture -- and people from whom the social order may need to be protected. A corollary, among Western observers, is to see youth as the inevitable emancipators of closed political systems.

Real Middle Eastern youth confound elite hopes and fears in ways both conventionally political and mundane. In Egypt, finds political scientist Marc Lynch, young Muslim Brothers are challenging their older leaders' platforms and habits of mind with the open discussion fostered by their blogs. In Beirut, as Lara Deeb and Mona Harb demonstrate, the purchasing power of pious Shi'i youth is generating an "Islamic" culture of fun to parallel the hard-partying "Paris of the Middle East" downtown. In Israel, argues sociologist Tamir Sorek, young fans of Likud-supporting Beitar Jerusalem and the Arab team from Sakhnin both use the soccer stadium to demand full integration as citizens, rendering the Beitar-Sakhnin matches more than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in miniature.

In a special report, James McDougall checks in on the recovery of Algeria from its long and brutal civil war. Many of the war's deep causes remain in place: The options in formal politics are limited to opportunism or principled, but impotent opposition, while the newly liberalized economy is working best for those who were already prosperous.

Also featured: Norma Claire Moruzzi reviews Shahram Khosravi's Young and Defiant in Iran; Khaled El-Rouayheb reviews Joseph Massad's Desiring Arabs; Rosemary Sayigh reviews Laleh Khalili's Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine; and more.

Subscribe to Middle East Report or order individual copies online at www.merip.org.

Middle East Report is published by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a progressive, independent organization based in Washington, DC. Since 1971 MERIP has provided critical analysis of the Middle East, focusing on political economy, popular struggles and the implications of US and international policy for the region.

Representing youth in the Middle East

The Winter 2007 issue of Middle East Report will come out in a couple of weeks. It's main focus this time is the politics of youth. As photo editor it was my job to find the best photography we can afford to accompany the articles. Sadly, I discovered that photos of youth (I'm not talking about kids, but 15-24 year olds) largely correspond to the popular image of the region as repressed, stern, and violent.

[Below are some examples of the usual clichés. However, these are all very good photographers, whose work I respect.]

One of the more common images of Middle Eastern youth:

[Spencer Platt/Corbis]

My goal was to find photographs that show youth being youth. By this I mean doing things like going to university or school, working, hanging out with friends, playing sports, engaged in entertainment like amusement parks, picnics, shopping, cafes, and using the internet. While I did find some photos like this, the vast majority instead chose to represent young people engaged in political demonstrations and rallies, religious observances, or as victims of war, poverty and oppression. These images do capture some part of the reality of life in the region, the problem is that these extra-ordinary moments are the dominant image while the everyday is rarely seen.

Another very common image of youth:

[Atta Kenare/AFP]

There are exceptions, of course. For example, there has been much interest in the youth of Iran for years now. Primarily the focus has been on the Tehran upper and middle classes, those who go skiing, shop at high-end stores, and wear fashionable outfits that only barely abide by the Islamic Republics restrictions on dress. Those images have become fairly commonplace. So common in fact as to become already a bit of a cliché. At first this new image was helpful in breaking up the old stereotype about stern-faced youth covered in black chadors or wearing beards, shouting death to America. They showed what some Tehran youth are up to. It's important to see there are plenty of young people who party, play music, flirt, have fun. But how representative of youth in Iran are those photos? As far as I know, it's just one thin slice of the population. In addition to the photos of hip and trendy youth, I wish there were other images depicting a wider range of youth and their various tastes, activities, levels of religiosity, and socio-economic positions.

An example of the sexy young Iranian woman cliché:

[Lynsey Addario/Corbis]

...which is meant to be understood in opposition to this sort of image of faceless women in chadors.

[Rob Howard/Corbis]

Another big exception to the standard picture of Middle Eastern youth as stern, religious and radical is the image of young people hanging out in shopping malls. However, the popularity of this image comes, I think, from a widespread belief in the (false) dichotomy of "traditional" versus "modern." It seems editors and viewers get some sort of satisfaction from seeing a supposed contrast between men and women in modest dress and veils wandering past global fast food franchises or international brand name stores in the sleek, familiar space of a mall.

An example from Bahrain:

[Spencer Platt/Getty]

I think the problem lies in that feeling of familiarity that is found in the popular images of hip youth and mall goers. My guess is that these newer images are popular because they seem to contrast with what outsiders believe is the dominant culture in the region. Perhaps editors choose them because they depict Middle Easterners as familiar and similar to European and American viewers. We can relate. But at the same time they are seen as surprising because of the usual image of the region.

Unfortunately, what gets lost in this search for the familiar (or its opposite -- looking for the image of religious extremism) is a whole range of other people and experiences. One article in the next issue is about youth in the southern suburb of Beirut, an area called Dahiyya. It's the neighborhood that got a lot of press coverage last summer because Hizballah's media and other offices are located there. During the war Israeli airstrikes took out many residential/commercial buildings there. But this article is about something else entirely. It discusses how youth in this mostly Shiite area figure out what are Islamicly appropriate modes of entertainment for themselves, which is defined differently depending on the individual. Many of these religious young people want high quality, interesting places to spend time and see friends but they don't want the alcohol, popular music and certain norms of behavior between men and women that are present in cafes in other parts of Beirut. The authors discuss a variety of places these youth are comfortable hanging out, like certain sports clubs, sleekly designed internet cafes, segregated beaches, restaurants, an amusement park and a mall.

Searching for photos of youth in the Dahiyya, however, I could only find pictures of them in Hizballah rallies, listening seriously to Nasrallah's speeches, or sadly searching for belongings in the midst of the rubble after last summer's war. Granted, photographing In the Dahiyya isn't easy. The dominant news story, which shapes what editors want, is about Hizballah and the war. (I found very few photos from before the war, no one was interested at that point.) The other difficulty is gaining access. Hizballah controls journalists' visits, many don't get permission from the party to photograph in the area, and people are at times suspicious of a photographer's intentions.

But even knowing the difficulties, I can't help but be frustrated. Observant young Muslims (and indeed youth across the Middle East of all sorts) are as animated, smiley, independent and intelligent as any teenagers and yet they are rarely represented this way.

Two examples of images depicting youth in their everyday reality:

[Alexandria, Egypt. Mark Henley/Panos]

[Algiers, Algeria. Giacomo Pirozzi/Panos]

It seems that as a young person in the image world that represents the Middle East you are either provocatively pushing the bounds of conservative, traditional society (such as Tehran beauties, Beirut nightclubbers and consumers of "western" brands) or caught up senselessly in religiously-inspired politics and extremism.

These categories and assumptions need desperately to be challenged by image-makers and image-buyers. There are certainly photographers who are thoughtfully depicting the nuances of the real Middle East, but they also need to make a living licensing their work to magazines, newspapers and agencies that are often still stuck in these invidious ways of imagining the region. One photographer I spoke to here in Beirut who does good work said he was shocked as he looked through his own archive trying to find photos of youth involved in normal, everyday activities.  He found very little.