Fares Zaitoon
Overview
"Switch the lights off” was the sentence that pushed my buttons as a child, as I heard my dad repeating it over and over. Years go by and as an adult in a city where everything including electricity gets more expensive by the day, I walk down the streets and see the lights on, in houses and public spaces. I hear my dad’s voice in my head and I am provoked to repeat the same sentence, “switch the lights off”. I have been there. I found a home. pockets for a rainy day, in case you forgot. You seem stubborn but your heart is in the right place. The sound of a passerby, dressed exactly the way you are feeling. The weight of a butterfly that lost its battle. This whispering voice of yours you try to maintain. Sometimes it is good to not know things, keeping your soul in the shadows. This moment here, now, shapes everything.
Born
Education
Fares Zaitoon is a self-taught photographer and visual artist, born and raised in Cairo. Since his childhood he had the passion to collect photographs till he pursued the art of making them himself in 2016. He dropped out of university to dedicate himself to making art and focusing on the essence of topics he identifies with. Zaitoon access personal and restricted territories through his work,the translates universal emotions using his own visual vocabulary. Such subjects include drug addiction and its related trauma, where he reflects and digs up unmasked and intense moments. Fares Zaitoon’s work was published on CNN Arabia (2019) and Darb1718’s Cairography (2018), and Hakawi exhibition in Paris (2019(
