Born in Lebanon in 1992, Myriam discovered photography when she was five. Her first camera, a fuchsia toy thrown out of a car window by her brother, became her first lesson in loss and impermanence. At sixteen, she began photographing to reclaim reality.
In her early years, she worked only at night and in black and white. She found overlaps between nightlife and revolution: It is about externally expressing things, as a collective, that we are taught to bottle up. She took pictures in the streets and in intimate spaces, where we are most exposed to both physical and emotional violence.
The 2019 Lebanese revolution marked a turning point. It felt, to her, like collectively leaving an abusive relationship—a refusal of what had long been normalised. She began shooting in colour, in daylight, and integrating text into her images.
After surviving the Beirut explosion on August 4, 2020, she documented its aftermath. She believes that personal narratives are acts of resistance, and defies the traditional ways of representing her region. What’s Ours gathers photographs from 2013 to 2023—a decade-long visual chronicle of intertwined revolutions that traces liberation from the intimate to the political.
Myriam Boulos is a photographer based in Lebanon who began photographing at sixteen to engage more closely with reality. Her work explores intimacy, resistance, and the complexities of public and private life, working across documentary photography with a focus on close engagement with reality.
She has exhibited her work at the International Center of Photography (New York), Huis Marseille (Amsterdam), and Cortona on the Move (Italy). Her projects and publications include What’s Ours (Aperture, 2023). She has received awards such as the Foam Paul Huf Award, the Eugene Smith Fellowship, and the PHmuseum Women Photographers Grant, and her work appears in outlets including Aperture, FOAM, Time, Vogue Arabia, and Vanity Fair France.
