Jihan
Ammar
Jihan is the Mideast
Deputy Photo Director for AFP (Agence France-Presse)
at their regional headquarters in Nicosia. Based
out of such diverse locales as Cairo, Tehran,
Paris, and Nicosia, Jihan has worked as a
professional photojournalist and photo editor for
over ten years covering stories from Baghdad to
Sydney.
Educated from Ithaca College, New York, Jihan
received her Bachelor of Science in 1992 in Mass
Communications with a minor in Political Science.
Her career in journalism began in Cairo with Al-Ahram
Weekly, Egypt’s number-one English-language
newspaper.
Her photography on assignment for AFP in places
such as Iraq, Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian
territories has appeared in newspapers and
magazines around the world. Jihan’s work in the
mainstream media shaped her perspective and led
her to pursue a documentary approach in a personal
body of work on the everyday lives of people in
the Middle East. Whereas photojournalism mostly
records history in public places, Jihan’s work
pictures personal histories in private spaces. She
photographs her friends and family, who become
characters in series. Her photographs reference
traditional portraiture, family snapshot
photography and documentary trends. A favourite
theme in Jihan’s work is the upper class Middle
Eastern wedding.
She is a 2003 recipient of the Fifty Crows
International Fund for Documentary Photography
Award for her picture essay on the everyday lives
of family and friends living in Egypt and Iran.
Her work has been exhibited around the world
including most recently at the Insitute du Monde
Arab in Paris, the Fotographie Forum International
in Frankfurt, African Biennale of Photography in
Bamako, Mali, The Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, and
the Fifty Crows Gallery in San Francisco.
Negar Azmi, senior editor at Bidoun magazine,
describes Jihan’s documentary work:
“Jihan Ammar creates a space of her own between
the tendencies of the documentary medium and the
intimacy of photographing one’s friends and family
in a manner that defies the pomp and performance
that we have come to associate with family
photography. Hers are private moments, veritable
psychological portraits that defy voyeurism. Ammar
draws viewers into her space in the most
unobtrusive manner, effectively denying her own
ownership over the image, while revealing moments
that are outside the frame of the conventional
family album given the cultural context within
which she is working.”
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