Photographer Nadim Asfar mixes his love of Madonna and Japanese art
“I want people to love photography,” says Nadim Asfar, a 28-year-old Lebanese photographer who is currently enjoying his first solo exhibition, “Juin” in Beirut. “And to love it they must feel it as I feel it.”
Asfar studied at the Academie Libanais des Beaux Arts (ALBA) and worked as a commercial photographer. He spent a year studying in Paris, but he maintains that his artistic impulse came accidentally: “I don’t have artistic culture. I wasn’t into art. I didn’t know of any photographers at all until I went to ALBA.”
Asfar’s true education came from an unlikely source: “Madonna was a catalyst,” he says without a hint of irony. Is he serious? Absolutely. “She was the first thing I loved after my parents. Madonna was really my emotional and cultural reference. She took all this culture and mixed it. Everything came to me accidentally. Madonna‘s videos are inspired by classic photographers and cinematographers. Even now, she’s a motor, something pushing me to go further.”
Add to Madonna a memorable trip to Japan and you have the main elements of Asfar’s style.
“The zen paintings, the gardens, the ikebana … When I saw Japanese art it was so straight to the point. It’s so not blah blah. European art, it’s accomplished a lot, but it’s very blah blah, very arrogant, very much a performance. If I have to choose, I really prefer the Japanese perception of things.”
As inconceivable as it may seem, one can sense these two strains in Asfar’s photograms – from Madonna, the drama of black and white; from Japan, an insistence on simplicity. In terms of technique, Asfar is well aware of his predecessors, from the Bauhaus school and Man Ray, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Christian Shad, to contemporary London-born, New York-based photographer Adam Fuss.
“In the beginning, I was like, ‘Okay, Man Ray did this so I can’t.’ In art school, they tell you so much how you need to invent new things.” But Asfar eventually decided to go for it anyway. “What’s new is my feeling,” he says, “not the technique.”
“Juin,” is on view at Fadi Mogabgab Contemporary Art, 268 Gouraud Street, Gemmayzeh, through August 15.
From an article by Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, The Daily Star.