"Saïd Nuseibeh is a photographer by profession and like many, balances his fine art work with commercial assignments traveling often between Amman, Damascus, and the West Coast. He started photographing and exhibiting at the age of thirteen.

He recently completed a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship where he traveled throughout Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, [Israel] and the Palestinian territories [sic] to make new images of historic Arab and Islamic architecture.

And he and his wife Dina are a expecting a child sometime in the next week or so -- so we are quite grateful he was able to give us a sampling of that fine work tonight.

Saïd is a heck of an architectural and landscape photographer. His color views are lush and persuasive and his black and white prints conjure mystical and transcendental evocations.

Nuseibeh like many a photographer, has a challenge in calling forth a mechanical medium to do the bidding of emotive beings.

He utilizes architecture not as an archeological or topographic photographer would, demonstrating mere facade, but utilizes the camera as a tool of a cultural historian. For him, the remains of things built hundreds or more than a thousand years ago are not lost and dilapidated ruins, but vivid conduits to a people and time that resonates energy and possibility. Particularly in this time of strident rhetoric between east and west, in a climate of religious discord, a thoughtful, illuminating dialog with multiple cultures is a welcome relief.

A few weeks past, when I was in conversation with Saïd about this presentation he reacted to some comments I had made last month while at this podium—I had remarked that by default, picture makers are outsiders- true enough at times, but what if you ARE striving to assert connections.

I hope he forgives me for quoting a private communication here, but it serves as an insight to work whose full meaning is not easily gained.

He was speaking of Arab and Islamic cultural experience, but it could be adjoined to any individual perspective at the edge of another.

"I work very hard to overcome the alienation of cultural experience, thinking it tremendously important for artists and audiences
to have the understanding that, even with limitations, photography can be a more important tool for bridging differences
than it is for highlighting them. I’m not appropriating but salvaging, adapting, energizing, and reinterpreting cultural traditions
and artifacts that have multiple audiences, indigenous and foreign.

The stakes in this activity for me are huge, but even bigger for my daughter-to-be."

Please do welcome Saïd Nuseibeh."