“My father used to get angry,” Van Leo, an Armenian-Egyptian photographer, once shared in a 1998 interview. “He’d tell me: ‘Did you make the studio for yourself or the customer? Stop making photos of yourself!'” Van Leo, who worked from the 1940s until the 1970s in Egypt, was more than just a photographer; his lens did not merely record the surface, the world we see everyday. He was more interested in capturing the soul – the raw, unspoken emotions beneath. Each photograph was an attempt to express an emotion, or a facial expression that uncovers the hidden aspects of ourselves we often keep veiled. He was known to occasionally close his studio for extended periods to capture himself in various costumes, a practice akin to performance art. From embodying a pilot, to a robber, a Bedouin, a cowboy, the Wolfman, and numerous other characters, his studio was like a theatrical stage for self-exploration. “In my studio, I feel free to do anything with myself,” he once said. “My self-portraits are very unconventional, from the lighting to the facial expressions. I did around 300 to 500 self-portraits in total.” For…
