Farah Foudeh

Farah Foudeh is a photographer and researcher interested in the impact of past and present images on perceptions of reality. Born and raised in Nigeria to second-generation  Palestinian Jordanian parents, she constantly floated between contrasting worlds, growing very aware of the gap between perception and reality in the media. Foudeh’s series Just Because I Cry Doesn’t Mean I Am Strong responds to the question: what happens to a community when it is tied to the past within the tourism context? In this series, men in Petra take center stage, tangling images of an ancient past with promises of exhilarating adventure. Foudeh works with these subjects to explore questions of identity and exoticization and examine how one’s understanding of self is shaped when experienced through the perspective of the experiencer.

Foudeh received a BA in International Studies from American University (2012) in Washington, DC, and an MA in Photography and Design from Elisava University in Barcelona (2017). She studies the influence of images on travel trends and human behavior, and believes that it is important to investigate the misrepresentations of the past in order to understand where we are today, and where we can go from here.