Reflecting on the disappearing tradition of studio portraiture in the Middle East, this important publication features Hrair Sarkissian’s photographs of empty, staged studio backdrops across six Middle Eastern cities: Alexandria, Amman, Beirut, Byblos, Cairo and Istanbul. These backdrops, absent of their sitters, become symbols of lost traditions, cultural identity and time; eulogies to a certain period within a society and celebrations of portraiture as an art form, and of these spaces, which can no longer be found.
