Basic Instinct 9 (from the Lost Images series)

Ammar Al Beik's photographs reveal his cinematic inspirations. The present work, from the Lost Images series, is based on undeveloped negatives from the 1950s and 1960s, that the artist bought from various dealers in Syria. He developed the negatives and ornamented them with coloured motifs that are assemblages of photographs that the artist took in 2005 of female Greek and Roman sculptures featured in the collection of the Syrian National Museum in Damascus. Through his unconventional and provocative photographs, Ammar Al Beik not only reveals his understanding of light and contrast, but also narrates a story, sometimes with a political twist, that captures glances of the contemporary world he lives in. Other editions of the present work have recently been acquired for LACMA's Private Collection in the United States.