Through her work Reading Marie al-Khazen's Photographs, [the author] fulfils a duty of remembrance, restoring to these women the merit they have been stripped of through the story of a figure that is both different from and common to all women.

Agenda Culture (Bloomsbury Translation)

Comparative and nuanced, attuned to gender and visual culture debates, Nachabe Taan's analysis of Lebanese photographer Marie al-Khazen's rare archive is a must-read for anyone interested in gender studies, histories of photography and middle eastern modernity.

Mary Roberts, The University of Sydney, Australia and author of Istanbul Exchanges

The first book-length critical engagement of indigenously produced women's photography in the Arab world, Nachabe Taan's rigorous and self-reflective study successfully makes the photographic oeuvre of one elite Lebanese woman amateur photographer relevant to the larger interplay between gender and class dynamics in Mandate Lebanon … A refreshing addition to the growing body of scholarship on indigenous photography of the Arab world.

Stephen Sheehi, William & Mary University, USA

In a novel reading of Marie al-Khazen's oeuvre, Yasmine Nachabe Taan shows how this independent Lebanese woman used her camera creatively to exert control over images, including her self-image, and complicate gender roles. Nachabe Taan's discovery and recovery of a body of forgotten photographs makes a major contribution to gender and visual studies and to critical discussions by scholars of the Middle East about archives, evidence, and intimate histories.”

Beth Baron, City University of New York, USA