This book is a sincere visual exploration and celebration of love in the Middle East and North Africa. The candor of street photography proves to be essential when dealing with love: a theme that is often reduced to a westernized one-size-fits-all or an orientalist wet dream. These photographs are captured when the lens searches beyond the unrest for manifestations of love in all its forms on the streets of the MENA region: the subtle, the indiscreet, the romantic, the platonic, the spiritual, the paternal, and the fraternal.

The book includes photographs taken between late 1960s up to early 2022, in Morocco, Algeria, Iraq, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Oman, Yemen, UAE, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Kurdistan, and other countries in the region, by a wide range of photographers including some of our favourites, Attar Abbas, Raymond Depardon, Rachid Ouettassi and many more.

The book includes a preface, introduction and three other texts titled, ‘Lovers’ Stroll’ , ‘Ritual and Devotion’, ‘Beyond the bonds of Blood’ and the ‘Immortal Olive Tree’. Written by Nour Regaya and Dalia Al-Dujaili, translated by Mourad Nusair.
Book design Omar Houssrey