Akram Zaatari (b1966, Lebanon) has emerged as one of the most prominent commentators on photography in the Middle East. Through film, video and photography, he explores the precarious status of archives in times of war, as well as their discursive limits as narrators of Lebanon's history. His investigations make us witnesses to powerful accounts of a period marked by the violence and disorientation of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). Zaatari's works provide a glimpse of what has been concealed from view and hidden inside bodies, and exhumes what has been buried in the earth: letters written in code passed through censors, tiny letters swallowed and delivered after defecation, instantaneous chats between lovers presented as a letter, and reassuring letters enclosed within mortar casings. Akram Zaatari is a video artist and curator who lives and works in Beirut. Along with photographers Fouad Elkoury, Walid Raad, and Samer Moadad he founded the Zaatari Arab Image Foundation, and he is the author of numerous videos exploring issues pertinent to Lebanese post-war condition, including All is Well on the Border (1997), This Day (2003) and In This House (2005).
Zaatari has also been exploring representations of male sexuality particularly in crazy of you (1997), and later in How I love you (2001).