On the day when we were remembering the one year of the passing away of my father, I was in the dry Msaylha Dam, Lebanon, lying on the ground, grieving the loss of my father. Everything around me was grieving its own loss too. Thousands of trees were cut down in that same spot. The promised water never came, nor did the grieving tears. Through this series of photos, you are invited to reconnect with the environment through shared emotions with the landscape. By equating the grief of a beloved person to the ecological grief, the works aim at reminding the viewer that humans and nature cannot be dissociated. It is indeed that segregation that has distanced us physically and emotionally from our environment and allowed for our way of living to become increasingly abusive and unstable. Sustainability is also the urgency of action. By focusing on this topic, I hope to shed light on the controversy and the failures of these intrusive human interventions, calling for an immediate halt to the construction of the rest of the planned dams in Lebanon.

Originally a biotechnology engineer, Mokbel established himself as a self-taught Lebanese photographer by using his visual works as a plea for social justice.

His work explores the intersection between the personal and the collective. Always socially engaged, he is fascinated in studying the multiple layers through which a topic can be approached. In his storytelling projects, he has often used human psychology as a point of entry to address societal and environmental concerns.

His first project, Describe the Sky to Me, was selected by the Arab Documentary Photography Program in 2018 and received the Photography Prize from the Boghossian Foundation in 2019. His second project, And Then, They Just Left, was exhibited at the Festival International des Arts de Bordeaux in 2021 and in Madrid as part of the official selection of PHotoEspaña 2022.

Myths have the power to both reflect and effect the psychology of their contributing cultures. Through a developed creative language, mythology allows the human psyche to create the world anew, showcasing the human propensity towards imagination. It is through this creative process that a single species utilizes its imagination to attempt to understand its environment, regardless of cultural or external contexts.

I remove myths from their cultural contexts, stylistically uniting them through similar form, line, material, and composition. The figures are illustrated on thin paper with black ink, held upright in space by steel armature. They cast their shadows on the surrounding surfaces, leaving the viewer with a sense of a fantastic realness in their presence. By removing the identifying cultural cues found in these legends, characters like Quetzalcoatl and Zmey Gorynych can be placed within the same cultural realms as each other, even though their origins are disparate in time and space. In doing this, the myths are able to represent the larger culture of humanity and the underlying psychology behind the myths we create.

Kenny Harris was born in Syracuse, New York, and attended Jamesville-Dewitt High School. He earned his BFA in painting and his BS in psychology from SUNY Brockport in Brockport, New York, while organizing a small non-profit community theatre organization. He went on to earn his MFA in Studio Art from Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a thesis focusing on mythology and its role in contemporary art, as well as its role in contemporary media.

Kenny currently works as an adjunct professor at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York and has shown in multiple group and solo exhibitions throughout the United States. His solo shows include exhibitions in Garrison, New York, Syracuse, New York, Eastport, Maine, and Barre, Vermont. His artwork explores the cultural and psychological connectivity of mythology through whimsical, graphic, figurative forms.

I believe that art is reflective of the reality that lies beneath the natural, physical appearance of human existence. Art is historical, political, psychological, musical and emotional. Art is a form of a deeper understanding that exposes the truths of life. Art is a visual language that is devoted to depicting the visual contemplation of the human experience. Art is a doorway, open to expressing various levels of human emotion and truth through the forms of pattern, texture, shape, line, shade, color, contour and shadow. My art is an examination of humanity. Although different streams of consciousness, ethnicity, and spirituality exist and struggle within all of humanity, the different elements of art come together to convey and explore the concerns, joys and beauty that exist within all of humanity  At times, all humans contemplate life, love, religion, decisions made and decisions yet to be made.

My paintings investigate and resemble the physical and spiritual experience and our very existence. As people, we sit and wonder at times what is, what was, what is to come and what will be. The experiences, although individual to one’s own heart, are experiences that bind us and bring us together. My art mirrors a physical and spiritual reality. The art is a reflection of joy, pain and confusion, contemplation and deliverance.

James Stephen Terrell is a native Washingtonian who was reared in Ward 7. His parents are Rev. Dr. James E. Terrell, Pastor of historic Second Baptist Church of Washington D.C. and retired Superior Court Associate Judge Mary A. Terrell of the Superior Court of Washington D.C. He received his high school diploma from Gonzaga College High School, his Bachelor of Fine Art from Howard University, his Master of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design, and the Master of Divinity Degree from the Union Theological Seminary, with a concentration on theology and the fine arts. While attending Union Theological Seminary, he also pursued fine arts painting elective courses at Columbia University. Terrell has taught art for over fifteen years in DCPS and DCPCS schools, has exhibited his work all over the country and has had multiple solo shows, including at museums. James Stephen Terrell is married to artist Zsudayka Nzinga, and together they have 3 children.