Lalla Essaydi

Lalla Assia Essaydi (born 1956) is a Moroccan photographer known for her staged photographs of Arab women in contemporary art. She currently works in Boston, Massachusetts, and Morocco. Her current residence is in New York.

Quotes

• "In my art, I wish to present myself through multiple lenses -- as artist, as Moroccan, as traditionalist, as Liberal, as Muslim. In short, I invite viewers to resist stereotypes."[1]
• “When I started working, I started photographing women in amazing houses, but when I brought my work to the West, all people were seeing were the beautiful spaces – they weren't seeing the women and that was disappointing,” [2]
• “I wish for my work to be as vividly present and yet as elusive as 'woman' herself,”[3]
• “Not simply because she is veiled or turns away – but because she is still in progress.”[4]
• “A lot of people still think that's the way we live, but as an Arab woman, I don't recognise myself in those paintings,”[5]
• “That piqued my curiosity and made me think about my identity as an Arab woman, so in a way, I reencountered my own culture through Orientalist paintings.”[6]