Fashion was never really as simple as clothing to me.

Storytelling is in my Syrian-born-and-raised blood. My mother was the first and only one of her thirteen brothers and sisters to attend and graduate college, earning a degree in Arabic Literature (she loved to draw and sing just as much as reading stories). My father, who brought us to the United States, was a wildly successful and notable journalist, and an even more cunning and persuasive businessman; words were his forte. My family is actually Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Turkish; that is an overwhelming amount of point of views, opinions, stories, and gossip – talking in general, really. And so, naturally I ignored all of that and became an Architect.

For quite a while I did not understand the type of artist I was. I am a classically trained and practicing Architect, and yet Fashion Photography is my form of freedom of expression. I cannot stop envisioning projects in their entirety, and executing them in a way an architect would, layer after layer slowly crafting “it” all together like a story. Because, that is what I do – turns out I am a Storyteller. The model is my protagonist. I have used the woodshop to hand-make clothes, chain-linked hundreds of tiny metal rings and folded thousands of magazine pages to make dresses, and laser-cut props in order to decorate the intricate settings I take my time in finding to construct for the shot. Figuring out the hair and makeup is like adding colorful words and descriptions. The camera is my pen, and post-production is the finishing touch that carries my voice.

As much as I wanted to ignore it, Fashion Storytelling is part of who I am. I love to create work that tells a tale in a single photograph, that extracts different reactions, questions and projected emotions from each reader. I leave it up to them to fill in the blanks and read between the lines. I used to often anxiously fight with myself trying to make my approach and work less architectural and more “normal” fashion photography, but quickly realized that this is simply how my brain functions. It is the best way I know how to tell a story.

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