Bringing The World Home To You

© 2024 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

She Who Tells A Story: A Lebanese-American Photographer Documents The Shared Experiences Of Girlhood

A teenage girl’s most intimate space is her bedroom. It is a place where she figures out who she is and tries on new identities. As Lebanese-American photographer Rania Matar watched her own daughters become teenagers, she became increasingly curious about the magic of that space.

She started taking portraits of girls in Lebanon and the United States and built the series “A Girl And Her Room.” In one photograph, a blonde-haired Lebanese girl named Christilla perches on a chair in her room in front of a Marilyn Monroe poster and next to a hot pink bra that hangs on a door. When this photo was on display in Boston, a viewer remarked to the museum curator that she thought the exhibit was solely portraits of Arab women. That kind of comment is the sign of a mission accomplished for Matar, who hopes her work challenges the stereotype of oppressed, veiled women in the Middle East.

Host Frank Stasio talks with Rania Matar, who grew up in Lebanon as the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, about how her photography parallels her own personal story. Selections of Matar’s series “A Girl And Her Room,” are part of a larger traveling exhibit called “She Who Tells A Story: Women Photographers From Iran and the Arab World.” That exhibit is on display at the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill until December 1.

Josie Taris left her home in Fayetteville in 2014 to study journalism at Northwestern University. There, she took a class called Journalism of Empathy and found her passion in audio storytelling. She hopes every story she produces challenges the audience's preconceptions of the world. After spending the summer of 2018 working in communications for a Chicago nonprofit, she decided to come home to work for the station she grew up listening to. When she's not working, Josie is likely rooting for the Chicago Cubs or petting every dog she passes on the street.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
Related Stories
More Stories