Camera Obscura

by John Vettese

exhibition

It took years for Lower Merion photographer Laura Jean Zito to earn the trust of her subjects, largely because they are a people who forbid photography.

This gradual change is evident in her 20 years shooting the Bedouin tribes of the Sinai desert. The earliest work from "In Nomads' Land," on display at Powelton Village's Photo West Gallery, is shot from a discrete distance, with backs turned and faces hid, a stark contrast to the tight crops and gritty detail seen later.

The lively Cat and Needlefish (pictured) steps close to a woman in a black cloth robe as she carves fish scales into a wicker basket while an orange tabby keeps watch. A ray of sunlight cuts through the dusty room in Suelma Making Pita, while the cook sits at a baking stone, smiling at the lens.

Zito first shot the Bedouin while traveling across the Middle East in 1979. Stranded in the city of Dahab on the Egypt/Israel border, she took to the street with her camera, but was denied when she tried to photograph a tribeswoman.

"She tried to sell me jewelry instead, and I told her the man I was traveling with had the money," Zito chuckles. "And then while they were haggling, I stepped back and snapped off a few shots."

Intrigued by the culture of the Bedouin — their style of dress, their traditional beliefs, the "palm tree oasis"-like villages they inhabited — Zito committed herself to gaining their trust and documenting their lifestyle. She returned as often as she could over the next three years, staying for months at a time and learning bits of their dialect, a variant of Arabic.

But once Egypt gained rule of the Sinai desert in the Camp David Accords, Zito left and didn't return for over a decade. When she traveled back in 1994, she saw a Westernized land, built up as a tourist destination, but found her ties to the old culture opened doors.

"When I went out into the desert and talk to people, they'd notice, "She's speaking the old way, the old Arabic,'" Zito says. "Then they'd relax."

Zito has continually returned in the years since, driven to capture what remains of the culture and maintain ties with friends made along the way. In some ways, shots like Advent of the Tire — a large wheel in the foreground, with Bedouin on camels riding into the distance — make the show seem like a stance against the dissolution of the traditionalist tribe.

She insists that is just a minor facet in an overall portrayal of a people she feels represent "a different type" of Middle Easterner. "There are people from Kansas who aren't like us on the East Coast because they were raised in a different cultural context," she says. "In the Middle East there are different contexts as well. I feel that the Bedouin are a perfect example of that otherness."

"In Nomads' Land," through March 30, Photo West Gallery, 3625 Lancaster Ave., 215-879-4696, www.photowestgallery.com.