Context matters: Part one.
Light, and other art backstories
Welcome to Wandering Home, I’m so glad you’re here!
As you may know, I recently relaunched my Etsy Shop called ShelbyMathisStudios. It’s a shop of my photography that I’m using to fund a volunteer trip to the Middle East with Beirut and Beyond this June. If you missed any previous Wandering Home letters, you can read more about this here:
Middle East trip: Summer 2023. (why now, why Jordan and Lebanon, and why me?)
Art can be a real weapon: how to use it for good. (my philosophy of art as a tool, language, and resistance.)
Peacemaking & Palestinian refugees (why I care, and why I volunteer with Beirut and Beyond.)
I want to share with you some images from my Etsy shop along with how or why I made them because the backstory of pieces are as much a part of the work as the ink or image or paper. I want to show you how I draw connections between places and people, and build bridges between communities, and how my work is often inspired and influenced by art, travel, people, and current events. I want you to know the context I make my work in and about. I want you to see the deeper stories that I see when I look at my body of work.
The following images on my Etsy Shop (open only through May 12!) celebrate, elevate, and support Beirut and Beyond’s efforts benefitting Palestinian refugees, my solidarity with the greater Palestinian struggle, and my joy to make work that propels hope and change. Read on to learn about the origins of these photos, and please consider purchasing one to support me, Beirut and Beyond, and Palestinian refugees.
Let’s wander for a moment to the Middle East. You with me?
“The Paths We Take”
📍Bethlehem, Palestine, 2015.
This image was captured on a hot summer day in Bethlehem, Palestine. I snapped a shot of Amber’s feet while she stood on the stairs. But these were no ordinary stairs. They were bright, an explosion of color in a sea of tan stone. The steps were hopeful and obnoxious in all the right ways.
And these were no ordinary feet. They weren't mine, but they belonged to someone who'd traveled where I'd traveled, ran away from and into the same hard places I'd been.
They were caked in the same dirt as mine from exhausting farm labor at Tent of Nations in the sweltering sun where showers weren't available because access to water was cut off, a form of collective punishment often used on Palestinians living in Area C of the occupied West Bank. These feet had walked the same rows of fruit and nut trees I had, in hopes that the Palestinian farmers who planted them could stay on the land and be around to see them mature and bear fruit.
They’d walked into the same hard conversations about the realities Palestinians endure under occupation, and our complicity and privilege within that context.
A brutal attack and shooting at Damascus Gate.
Humble church services in the Old City.
Healing songs in caves and around camp fires.
Refusing to be enemies.
Back home with more questions than answers.
Feet carry us into stories and out of them. They measure where we've been; they keep records of our journeys for us. The stories we tell can be written from our soles advancing into the places unknown, and our lives written from our souls going into parts unknown.
This is one of my favorite photos I've ever taken. Not because of the way it looks, but the way it talks. I love how it speaks about the often unexpected paths we take.
“Light”
📍Shatila Refugee Camp, Beirut, Lebanon, 2019.
This image is a symbol of light and hope coincidentally captured on my second trip to the Middle East, in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.
You can hear stories and see pictures from the camps and never grasp the magnitude of life in them. I still can’t, because I got to wander home and leave. But it did sink in to me and never left.
I’d spent hours wandering through the alleys and cramped streets of Shatila Camp in Beirut with Suzann and Em Ahmed. We walked far into the heart of the camp so I could see it for the first time and work to capture images of the realities.
Toward the end of our tour we found ourselves in an alley similar to others I’d wandered: dark and damp (Beirut is humid as hell), littered with trash (the host country doesn’t provide trash services in the camps), live electrical wires strung up overhead bundled next to water lines (infrastructure is lacking — this was supposed to be a “temporary” camp established in 1949.) I was still looking for signs of life from inside, but I was becoming overwhelmed with the desperation and injustices I was witnessing. I tried to put my own sensitivities aside as I kept following and looking. Yallah.
Allow me to center my experience for a moment more: I don’t remember discovering the feather or even taking this photograph. It was serendipitous and intuitive, I suppose. A gift of my subconscious, who’d taken the wheel after I had exhausted myself shooting hundreds (maybe thousands) of photographs before that moment. It was my first time in an urban camp like this and it was a shocking, overstimulating environment for me. I still got the work done, still tread respectfully and lightly. Still did my best to capture it thoroughly without making anyone feel uncomfortable or objectified as I was still learning how to capture photos that didn't diminish the dignity of those who lived there, who called it home.
I discovered the image when I was dumping media onto my laptop later that evening at a hookah-smoky cafe at my hostel just off Hamra street in Beirut, recovering from the tough day of work and exposure in the camp with a glass of Lebanese white wine and a greasy musakhan chicken wrap. When I saw it, it took my breath away.
Wallah. Oh my god.
Deep in the bowels of the camp in this alley, I looked up and saw a feather on a wire. I captured it, even though I can’t recall it.
It was an image I needed to find me, my own art instructing me on looking for light in dark places, even when I didn’t know how to see it yet. I think it’s one of the most significant images I’ve captured to date because it is a powerful symbol of resolve to keep showing up, to grow in capacity and knowledge, to speak up and help in the ways wherever effective, to wholeheartedly commit to staying relational and connected amidst the continuous pain and trauma of the ongoing Nakba.
I hope that’s a symbol you can relate to. There’s always hope and light to be found, if we’re willing to have the eyes for it.
You can learn more about my trip and artwork by attending this upcoming virtual event with me! Join me on Zoom to have a conversation about Palestinian refugees. Beirut and Beyond’s executive director, Suzann Mollner, will present on the history and realities of 75+ years of refugee status. I will share my experience in the Middle East and lots of my photography. We will talk about our upcoming trip to Lebanon and Jordan, the importance of my work with Beirut and Beyond, and how you can become involved!
Sunday, April 30th
1:00pm MDT / 3:00pm EDT
on Zoom (link provided upon registration)
Thanks to those of you who’ve supported my Middle East volunteer trip so far through buying my artwork and book, making a donation, or through providing resources to support me on this journey. Thanks for all of the ways you’ve shown up for me as I work in solidarity for Palestinians and Palestinian refugees. The work to stand in solidarity and speak up with Palestinians has never been more important. It means the world to me to have your support as I continue to try to make a living and make an impact with my work.
Please shop ShelbyMathisStudios before May 12 or attend “Connect & Palestinian Refugees” on April 30th to support my trip to Lebanon and Jordan this June in support of Palestinian refugees.
Grateful,
