Myriam Boulos: What’s Ours

A searing, diaristic portrayal of a city and society in revolution by Magnum nominee Myriam Boulos. In her debut monograph, Myriam Boulos casts an unflinching eye on the revolution that began in Lebanon in 2019 with protests against government corruption and austerity—culminating with the aftermath of the devastating Beirut port explosion of August 2020. She portrays her friends and family with startling energy and intimacy, in states of pleasure and protest. Boulos renders the body in public space as a powerful motif, both visceral and vulnerable in the face of state neglect and violence. Of her approach to photography, Boulos states: “It’s more of a need than a choice. I obsess about things and I don’t know how to deal with these obsessions in any other way but photography.” Featuring a contextual essay by noted writer Mona Eltahawy, What’s Ours showcases Boulos’s strident and urgent vision.

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 192
Number of images: 150
Publication date: 2023-12-19
Measurements: 7.1 x 8.6 inches
ISBN: 9781597115605

“What’s Oursis a life-affirming, absorbing, world-making photobook; a future classic of the genre. Similar to the seminal photographers she admired while growing up, Boulos’ work delineates the territory of its own imaginative terrain and invites you to enter the world it presents.”—Emily Dinsdale, Dazed magazine

“It makes for a revealing, radical window into life as a young person in Beirut over the past decade, from its most romantic moments to its most violent. The public and the private framed side-by-side.”—Isaac Muk, i-D magazine

“[Boulos’] photographs vibrate with Kinetic energy and are swaddled in intimacy, whether they be moments of intimacy or protest. A study on a place at its turning point, Boulos shows that intimacy, belonging, and strength are three of a kind.”—Allison Schaller, Vanity Fair

Myriam Boulos (born in Beirut, 1992) emerged from a country fragmented by war that had to reinvent itself. At the age of sixteen, she started to use her camera to question Beirut, its people, and her own position in Lebanese society. She graduated with a master’s degree in photography from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in 2015. She has taken part in both national and international collective exhibitions, including Infinite Identities at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam; Troisième Biennale des Photographes du Monde Arabe, Paris; C’est Beyrouth at the Institute of Islamic Cultures, Paris; Berlin Photo Week; and Photomed, Beirut. She received the Purple Lens Award in 2014, which resulted in her first solo exhibition in 2015. Her second solo exhibition took place at the French Institute of Lebanon in 2019. Her work has been published in Aperture, FOAM, Vogue, Time, and Vanity Fair, among other publications.
Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning writer on Arab and Muslim issues and global feminism. She is the author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015), founder of the newsletter Feminist Giant, and a regular contributor to the New York Times.