ROGER MOUKARZEL
The butoh

until October 25th, 2012

Born in Beirut in 1962, Roger Moukarzel began his career as a photographer at the age of 15, amidst the Lebanese conflict. At a very young age, he became a war correspondent at the Sygma agency for a decade and a half, and later on moved to Reuters where he held the position of chief reporter to the Beirut office for another 15 years. In parallel, he established a fashion photography studio, and today his work is engrained in the field of advertisement production.

Moukarzel’s documentary photographs are featured in numerous international publications, and the several prizes he received are a testimony to his officially recognized work, among which is the Reuter Worldwide picture of the year in 1987. Two years later, he was featured on the front page of Paris Match, marking the magazine’s 40th anniversary, which in turn granted him the title of Best Photographer. In 1999, the Ministry of Culture, MEP in Paris also awarded him a prize in recognition of his work, and in 2000 he received the "Award for Sustainable Development Media for the UNDP" from UNDP Lebanon. Since 1995, his artistic photographs have been regularly exhibited in Lebanon and France, as well as in Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Jordan. His portraits and landscapes, tackling themes of ethnicity and heritage, deliver the powerful message of his personal convictions. Some examples include Line’s Portrait, Kadisha Valley, The veil, Green Gold, and The Journey of the veil. This body of work culminated in The 100 People That move Lebanon award in 2001 by L'Express Magazine in France, which earned him the Golden Pikasso twice in a row, in 2003 and 2004. Since 2009, Alice Mogabgab’s Gallery has been regularly exhibiting Moukarzel’s photographs. In October 2012, The butoh will showcase a set of work realized in collaboration with the Japanese artist Takayoshi Sakabe, who in the photos is depicted dancing the traditional Japanese butoh in the photographer's studio. This dance, which is less of a show and more of a performance, sets the human body in relation to the themes of the universe. In this collection of shots, Roger Moukarzel captures the slowness, purity, as well as the power of body movement. Taken in a narrow frame and in diffused light, the artist is aware of the mysticism arising from the being and unfolding into space.

Through 15 photographs by Moukarzel and eight paintings by Sakabe, visitors can discover a language of the body in space and in time, set at the edge of photography and painting, oscillating somewhere between the Middle and the Far East, and falling from music to silence!

Catalog of the exhibition edited by the gallery with a text by Christophe Claro.