Marie-Noëlle Fattal is Lebanese and works in the field of Communication. After spending most of her life abroad, she returns to Lebanon in 2012. During her Sunday walks, she starts taking pictures of Beirut with her smartphone. “I was enjoying taking pictures of the many little things I was discovering, and that were so different from what I used to see in other places where I lived. This Mediterranean charm, this middle eastern/melting pot identity, these colors, these stairs, these graffitis, these people, this fragility… The pictures started accumulating in my phone. Without noticing, I was starting to document the city.”
In 2015, she decides to create an Instagram page named @BeirutFootsteps, with the aim to share her pictures and emotions while safeguarding the visual memory of an ever-changing city.
In 2017, she publishes her first photography book Beirut Footsteps, featuring a selection of posts from the Instagram account published between March 2016 and March 2017. Part diary, part photo book, this publication is a poetical and visual wandering in the streets of Beirut.
In her first solo exhibition Ephémères held in December 2020, she shows the hidden beauty of everyday life with a sincere tenderness that plunges us into the incomparable charm of her city. "This exhibition was conceived as a tribute to Gemmayze, Mar Mikhaël and their inhabitants, and the majority of the photographs shown have been taken in this area before the August 4th blast. I wanted the images to be featured at BEYt, a cultural space where I loved to spend time, and that has just been restored. The exhibition was also born out of my desire not to end 2020 on a note of resignation."
In November 2022, she publishes Beirutis, her second photography book. "The inhabitants of Beirut are the protagonists of my photography book. Through these photos taken mostly between 2018 and 2022, I wanted to tell the Beirutis’ story during these pivotal years in which their lives have changed,” explains Marie-Noëlle Fattal. "It's a very personal vision, in images but also in texts, as my photos are accompanied by short captions. I chose to write the book in three languages: French, English and Arabic, because linguistic diversity is part of our culture. » Halfway between a personal diary and a photographic report, “Beirutis” captures the spirit of Beirut and its people through the tender gaze of its author.