Alex Gurian reviews Walid Raad

Walid Raad, born 1967, is a Lebanese photographer and contemporary media artist. As a child, he dreamt of being a photojournalist, and his father gave him his first camera and helped him create a home darkroom. In 1983, Raad had to leave Beirut and leave to the United States, where he studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In the 1990’s, Raad created the fictional Altas Group to document the Lebanese Civil Wars. In The Atlas Group, Raad creates work and then credits them to fictional people who “donated” them to the foundation.