ELENA DORFMAN SYRIA’S LOST GENERATION
9 May - 24 July 2016
Elena Dorfman, Dvaa, 2013, archival ink jet print on paper
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ELENA DORFMAN SYRIA’S LOST GENERATION
9 May - 24 July 2016
Through portraiture and audio recordings, Los Angeles-based Elena Dorfman (1965 — ) offers a humanistic perspective to the Syrian conflict, a global crisis that has claimed more than 470,000 lives and driven 6.5 million people from their homes. On assignment with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2013, Dorfman documented exiled Syrians in Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon. The tenmonth project built on her previous work as a documentarian—in particular The C-Word (1998), a photographic series of teenagers living with cancer—and her background as
Elena Dorfman, Reem, 2013, archival ink jet print on paper
a portraiture photographer for publications such as The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, and Fortune. Syria’s Lost Generation documents teenagers who, to Dorfman, spoke of “powerful longing and frustration.” Suffering physical and psychological ills, facing uncertain futures, and fearful of retaliation, they “seemed particularly shell-shocked and bereft.” The individuals appearing in these works presented themselves to Dorfman with the hope their stories would be told.
Cover: Elena Dorfman, Bathoul, 2013, archival ink jet print on paper
Elena Dorfman, Anas, 2013, archival ink jet print on paper
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Elena Dorfman: An Interview Conducted by Monica Ramirez-Montagut Director, Newcomb Art Museum & Exhibition Curator
other projects for the U.N. And then in 2014, I was sent to Amman, Jordan. All together, it was about ten months over the course of two years.
April 2016
MRM: Can you tell me how Syria’s Lost Generation came about? ED: The woman who heads the media program at the United Nations HCR [High Commissioner for Refugees], the refugee arm of the U.N., is very wise and knew that in order to help sustain the attention of the world, different kinds of images were needed. She was looking for ways that people could bring their own personality and their own eye to it and not just go through the normal repertoire or reporting channels. I feel the work is relatively straightforward, but I treated it more like a fine art project, rather than a piece of reportage. I was given enormous free reign to come up with something that would be interesting and that the public could latch onto. I knew that teenagers—I call them that but they’re really young adults—were an unusual subject matter that most people weren’t paying attention to. MRM: How long did it take you? ED: I was based in Beirut for six months in 2013, traveling throughout the Middle East while I worked on this and 4
MRM: Did you stay at the refugee camps and interview individuals there? ED: Not exactly. My base was in Beirut, Lebanon, but I was allowed to cover the countries that hosted Syrian refugees, excluding Europe; this was pre-migration to Europe. So, that included Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, and the Kurdistan area. I moved throughout the region, finding people and stories to convey what was going on, but I wasn’t just an artist floating around. Since I was hired by the U.N. and had the Lost Generation series to work on, I was accompanied at all times and driven to the camps by U.N. folks. MRM: How do you prepare to walk into a situation like this? ED: I think the reason why I was asked to go was because I have a history of making portraits, not only through my fine art work, but also because for many years I was a magazine photographer. I took this project because I had the desire to be connected to a global story that was unfolding in the present. I can’t say there’s training, but I can just say I’m a person who’s sensitive to her surroundings. And that was what was most necessary.
Elena Dorfman, Hany, 2013, archival ink jet print on paper
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Elena Dorfman, Itmad, 2013, archival ink jet print on paper
MRM: Travelling to the countries that you mentioned, what was something that you were not expecting? What was the most striking aspect of this project? ED: Well, I have to say that the Syrian refugees don’t all live in camps. For example, Beirut has small areas called “informal settles” and people move through the city streets. Working with 6
them created a sense of discovery that kept me engaged. I think having personal contacts, hearing the stories and seeing first hand their faces full of shrapnel or their bodies burned to pieces, these are things I learned. I never stepped foot in Syria. I wasn’t allowed to go to Syria. So, learning the history of the country through the eyes of the refugees was deeply meaningful.
MRM: From your point of view, can you tell me what happens to the notion of home when one can no longer go back? ED: Well, it’s like when someone dies and then takes on a larger-than-life mystique or persona. What I heard over and over was the idea of never appreciating something until it’s gone. So, I think home becomes a place that is valued enormously. People have a tremendous love for the country, not for the government but for the place itself. Syrian cities have been monumental places, epic and full of life. And the Syrians that I met were generous, kind and hospitable, deep and soulful people. MRM: Following last year’s tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Tulane University dedicated an array of special programs to explore the notion of resilience. Do you see a sense of resilience in the refugees? How can they recuperate from something so dramatic, so transformative? ED: I don’t think resilience is something they think about because they are still in the middle of crisis. I’m not sure if the survivors of Katrina felt resilient as it was happening. For these refugees, this is unfolding minute by minute, and people don’t know where they’re going to be next. I think there was a sense of resilience earlier on but there’s a sense of endangerment right now, and it just shifts and changes constantly. As people
Elena Dorfman, Abdallah, 2013, archival ink jet print on paper
are getting asylum in other places, that’s helpful, but with the world largely turning its back, I think the situation remains dire. MRM: So, if Syrian refugees cannot go back home, and see no clear future, how do you think they cope with or negotiate these notions: past, present, future? ED: They just live in the present, and minute-by-minute. One important thing to note is that refugee camps are places where people live, on average, for twenty years. People think they’re coming for a short transitional period, but that’s not always true. While I was there, I saw the shift from people saying, “We’re going to go home soon” to “we’re not going to go home anytime soon.” 7
Despite this reality, people were beginning to say, “We have to make a life where we are now.” They are trying to adapt their camps-homes to a more permanent stay. For example, I was just in touch with somebody at a camp in Jordan called Zaatari [estimated population 83,000], and they said there are now theatres for the children. This wasn’t the case before. Zaatari is a new city that’s housing a lot of people who will most likely be there for a long time. That’s where some refugees will raise their families; that is where they’ll be from—the camps! Even then, the main issue is that there are few jobs but people want to stay engaged and need a livelihood.
MRM: How does Lost Generation fit in with the rest of your body of work? And how do you come back from this experience and try to work on something else? It must be hard. ED: When I left for the Middle East I had just finished the Empire Falling project on the rock quarries of the Midwest, and I had already started the Los Angeles River landscape project called Sublime, which took longer than I anticipated. When I came back I did have to change gears. Sublime was finished last September, and I have taken a big pause since then, really considering what’s next. I always gravitate to the outsider. I’m always looking for a person or thing that either isn’t seen, or is seen in a light that is generally not understood, people who are kind of left of center. That is what I gravitate to. The teenagers certainly fit in that outsider spot. I started my career as a documentarian so that type of work helped me for Lost Generation. It was unfamiliar to me because I hadn’t been there in a while; however, I became so engaged with the Syrian population and the situation that it almost didn’t matter. What I was photographing was so important in terms of a document that that was okay. MRM: What do you mean by that?
Elena Dorfman, Empire Falling 2, 2012, digital C-print (lightjet) on metallic paper, 50 x 35 1/2 inches
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ED: I mean that I was documenting the life I found there. I wasn’t making an art statement. I was working for the U.N., and they had hired me to do something unusual, but I had to keep it within a certain realm. And so I did. And by doing that, I became very interested. So, if I were not working for the U.N. I would have taken the project into something more abstract, definitely. MRM: Practically speaking, how can you prepare for this kind of project, which is so full of unknowns? ED: You need to be prepared. For example, you should have ready every piece of equipment you are going to need; hopefully you’ve given it some thought! I knew I was going to do this Lost Generation series and some people were already helping me find people of the age range I was looking for. So throughout the U.N. system, I was asking people to look for me. You have to rely on a lot of people, and you have to be grateful for those relationships. If you’ve got an air of professionalism around you and you know what you’re doing, then people believe in you. But you have to know your equipment, and you have to know your subject matter or at least be open to it before approaching. MRM: In terms of subject matter, the content, how did you prepare to understand the Syrian crisis? By talking to U.N. officials?
Elena Dorfman, Iman 2013, archival ink jet print on paper
ED: That’s interesting. I get asked that quite often, about how I had the cultural competency to do this series. I don’t think I did. I mean, I’ve been in many situations throughout the world so I’m flexible and I move with the flow. Also, I’m very sensitive when I’m photographing people. So for an organization like the U.N., you have to be sensitive. It’s a protection agency and people are watching you and they’re watching how you’re interacting with people. I was extremely careful about what I did. I try never to take advantage. This is a traumatized group, so you just have to carry that sensitivity to in any situation. I learned as I was going along. I was mostly just on the ground talking to people every single day and never really stopping; everyday getting in a 9
Elena Dorfman, Alee, 2013, archival ink jet print on paper
car and going to hear what people had to say, to photograph their stories. I just had to stay on it. I was very interested in the subject, and I was very interested in their voices. You have to be an empathetic and curious person if you’re going to do this kind of work. MRM: Yes, you cannot arrive there with a preconceived idea of what is happening because then you may miss a reality that you want to document, those precise things that not everyone sees. ED: Right. You just have to be open. It’s very fluid. It changes all the time. I had no experience with refugees before. 10
I had never been in a refugee camp or seen people in such dire circumstances. You know, sometimes I didn’t want to see it. Sometimes it was too much. To be perfectly frank, it got overwhelming. But then you just have to step back and take a break. Take a little time off, and this I learned as I went along. MRM: For the Lost Generation series, you brought your experience in portraiture as well as your experience as a documentarian. So, being flexible and adaptable comes from particular professional experiences that were able to draw from in critical moments, when you needed to keep on going.
ED: That’s absolutely right. MRM: And you keep building on your roster of experiences through the different projects you have done. To me, one of your most extreme projects, if I may describe it as such, is Still Lovers for which you documented men with their anatomically correct, hyper-realistic female dolls. It is very intimate material. ED: I think people trust me because I’m not out to get them in any way. Still Lovers came directly from a magazine assignment, but it was so unbelievably fascinating that, on my own, I stayed with it another four to five years. I photographed men with their dolls all over the country. I didn’t have any judgment. I wasn’t there to fear or criticize them. I was there to simply understand them, and that’s always the goal. I’m not trying to expose or humiliate. I’m trying to do the opposite. I think the men understood that. That’s what I strive for in every situation where I’m making pictures.
your website and it was difficult not to feel very strange in the sense that Still Lovers and Lost Generation are such different projects.” But in the end, I’m just trying to show people who are underrepresented, marginalized, excluded from the world, and who have a story to tell that may be interesting and others can learn from. With the dolls, the project is a great marriage of psychology, technology, and robotics; what’s happening with the future; and what’s happening now. It’s a pretty deep world. MRM: I would say that both projects are very intimate in nature. What you’re getting at is a part of the human condition that is very rarely discussed. The person you’re portraying may not feel comfortable discussing these issues and yet they let you document them. They allow you to get to the core,
MRM: Yes, you’re going out of your way to try to understand someone in particular circumstances. ED: Yes, and that was an incredibly fascinating project I’m actually still working on today, but in a different context. Often I came across people at the U.N. who said, “I was looking at
Elena Dorfman, Rebecca 1, 2001 series Still Lovers C-Print, Aluminium 74,6 x 74,6 cm. Courtesy the artist; Edwynn Hook Gallery, New York
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work. Because I worked for high-end magazines for fifteen years, when I did the Lost Generation series, I partnered not only with the U.N. but also with The New Yorker. Through this partnership, the magazine built a website that got a lot of attention for the Syrian teenagers. So, I would say that today in the professional world, it’s really about relationships.
Elena Dorfman, Farman, 2013, archival ink jet print on paper
the heart of the human condition in its multiplicity of dimensions. ED: I think I am very privileged because I am allowed into circumstances where people are on the fringe. I’m always looking for the thing that is on the edge, that is very raw and revealing. It’s just trying to get to the heart of somebody’s unique condition and always trying to tell that untold story. MRM: As you know, we are a university museum and our core audience is students. I was wondering what advice you could give them? For example, how have you managed your career, which has had such diverse projects? ED: Well, my career is an interesting marriage of my fine art and my magazine 12
For a long time I managed both careers: editorial magazine work and fine art work. Now I’m primarily a fine artist. The U.N. project came out of left field, and I took it because I wanted to satisfy my own need to do something in this world, to have a greater cause other than myself. When you’re an artist, you work alone a lot—you’re in your own head. I personally felt that I wanted to see what was happening in the world, to be engaged beyond my studio. And this answered that need. I didn’t know how much I wanted to be engaged until I went. I was happy to be out in the world while this story was unfolding in front of me, and to see it for my own eyes. And then the goal became how to have other people open their eyes to see it, too. MRM: Thank you, Elena, for opening our eyes as well as our hearts.
Elena Dorfman, Safa, 2013, archival ink jet print on paper
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ABOUT THE ARTIST Boston-born Elena Dorfman (1965- ) studied
Pleasure Park, a multi-media exploration of
at the University of Vienna Austria in 1987
competitive horseracing which featured
and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College
a five-minute panoramic film, a one-hour
in 1988 with a Bachelor of the Arts. She
video, and photographic studio portraits of
has specialized in documenting extreme
thoroughbreds; and Fandomania: Characters
circumstances and unusual subjects.
& Cosplay, a look into the world of the Japanese pop-cultural phenomenon.
Her body of work includes conceptual landscapes such as Sublime: The L.A.River,
She has exhibited her work at the Los
a series made along the urban waterway
Angeles County Museum of Art, Cincinnati
over two years, and Empire Falling, images
Art Museum, United States Holocaust
exploring the abandoned and active rock
Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., San
quarries of the Midwest.
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.
Her investigations of marginalized communities includes Still Lovers, focusing
Dorfman currently lives and works in Los
on the domestic lives of men and women
Angeles, California.
who devote themselves to life-size sex dolls,
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ABOUT THE MUSEUM The Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane
In 1996, the Newcomb Art Department
University builds on the Newcomb College
completed an expansion and renovation of
legacy of education, social enterprise, and
its facilities that included the addition of
artistic experience. Presenting inspiring
the Newcomb Art Museum (previously the
exhibitions and programs that engage
Newcomb Art Gallery), an exhibition space
communities both on and off campus, the
dedicated to presenting contemporary and
museum fosters the creative exchange of
historic exhibits. Housed in the Woldenberg
ideas and cross-disciplinary collaborations
Art Center, the museum today presents
around innovative art and design. The
original exhibitions and programs that
museum preserves and advances scholarship
explore socially engaged art, civic dialogue,
on the Newcomb and Tulane art collections.
and community transformation. The museum also pays tribute to its heritage through
The academic institution for which the
shows that recognize the contributions of
museum is named was founded in 1886
women to the fields of art and design.
as the first degree-granting coordinate college for women in America. The H.
As an entity of an academic institution, the
Sophie Newcomb Memorial College was
Newcomb Art Museum creates exhibitions
distinguished for educating women in the
that utilize the critical frameworks of
sciences, physical education, and, most
diverse disciplines in conceptualizing and
importantly, art education. Out of its famed
interpreting art and design. By presenting
arts program, the Newcomb Pottery was
issues relevant to Tulane and the greater
born. In operation from 1895 until 1940, the
New Orleans region, the museum also serves
Newcomb enterprise produced metalwork,
as a gateway between on and off campus
fiber arts, and the now internationally
constituencies.
renowned Newcomb pottery.
This exhibition and its public programs were supported in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Newcomb College Institute. The museum would like to thank AnnieLaurie Erickson, Assistant Professor of Photography, Newcomb Art Department for her invaluable assistance in this exhibition. Thanks also to student-worker Eunice Lee for transcribing the audio-recorded interview with Dorfman.
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Tulane University 6823 St. Charles Avenue New Orleans, LA 70118 NewcombArtMuseum.Tulane.edu 504.865.5328