محمد الاسد .. يمارس الصحافة ويهوى التصوير .. مجلة فن التصوير اللبنانية _ ع٢٧

Muhammad al-Assad
practices journalism and loves photography

Muhammad Mustafa al-Assad has practiced journalism since 1975 in his capacity as a representative of the National Media Agency in the south, and by virtue of this work he found that the camera is necessary for him in his travels, especially because of the historical and aesthetic importance of the south, as al-Assad supplies news for the agency and pictures for his private archive, which now includes a lot of Business for all southern regions.

Muhammad Al-Assad has a distinctive narrative style in his photographic works, where each picture has a story that emerges through the frame and the power of expression...
He pours out a lot of himself with every picture. So that you feel seeing him as it embodies many aspects of life, he practices a high technique trying to combine bright colors, stones and destruction through his feather mixed with many meanings.
Muhammad al-Assad is an artist who appears to us with a developed style and a pictorial philosophy that he draws from. He says:
The camera is the third eye through which the photographer enters another world to capture what he likes of scenes, embodying a vision that may not be visible to others, so that he transfers it to the negative, which is like a recording tape that the photographer returns to to retrieve what he saw - previously - at any time he wants. He can also display this view in front of whoever he wants... If he chooses well through the content and the framework, then he deserves the title of a photographer.
Muhammad al-Assad continues:
- But the photographer must always progress through the stages of giving, and through a renewed look to reach different artistic levels, depending on the extent of the feeling and awareness of this photographer. Photography, like any other art, needs feeling in order to be integrated.
Regarding his relationship with photography, as a start, al-Assad says:
Photography has fascinated me since 1965 when I bought my first camera and started reading photography through foreign magazines and books.
Because there are no Arab magazines specialized in this technical article.

She was pushed more towards photography when she started producing black and white photos in all its stages. Especially inside the black room, where I turned one of the balconies of our house into a laboratory, discovering that I have a great tendency towards black and white because of its advantages and capabilities, as I consider that the photographer can monitor all the stages that his photographic production goes through. Sensitive paper until the beginning of its emergence inside the acidification vessel and then its complete appearance with control over its gradation, including stopping the gradation process at the limit we see fit.
- With this rush of black and white, we find that your colored works are also of a special and distinctive character.
- It is known that color is one of the means of attracting sight to all creatures on earth, and it is natural that I am affected by some colored themes, which I find more important when we come to the print with its natural colors, and this means that the photographer must know what he wants so that he can still feel what he wants to get in The final result, as not all colored subjects will produce a better result when captured in color. From here, I find dealing with filters, and it gives good results to highlight certain features or hide other features, as well as impart a specific color to a specific clip to dilute the light and highlight the color.
In this regard, Muhammad al-Assad continues:
Working with filters in my opinion, and with color photography, requires working with slide films, slides, because the effect will be more clear than if it was with regular film, especially if we take into account that ordinary film is often printed by electronic printing machines whose primary task is programmed to give
A typical picture of implementation - to satisfy the customer - from here it works to delete many of the effects of filters and neglect them. We do not encounter this dilemma with slides. Note that I have a special opinion on the issue of filters, which is that a natural shot without effects remains the best, provided that it is complete in elements and content.

- A question constantly asked to photographers, both professionals and amateurs, is, what can a photographer photograph, what is the answer to such a question, in your opinion?
As you mentioned in the first lesson of . Principles and method, I repeat that the surroundings around us are full of what pleases the senses and the eye together, and if we look with an open mind and a perceptive vision, we will find a lot of subjects that can be photographed... The important thing is then that we feel and put our feeling in a technical template to obtain our vision.
From here, we must constantly link the camera wherever we are, and wherever we go.

What we see is that the majority of your works are from the regions of southern Lebanon. Does this mean that your tours are limited to these regions:
- on the contrary . .. I have arrived in my wanderings in France, Italy. Greece, Rhodes, Bulgaria, Hungary and others. From these tours I returned hundreds of pictures
Beautiful, but I always prefer to publish works from my country, despite my benefit in terms of experience through my observations on these travels.

- To what extent do you consider yourself to have covered the southern regions photographically?
- Our dear south, as is well known, complains about the lack of media - the photographer. Knowing that it is full of monuments, antiquities, and places of beauty and diversity, and this, in my opinion, is something that I cannot cover alone, or that any other photographer can cover. This requires organizing photographic exploration trips in the southern regions in the future.
For my part, this south has the first place in my media work, and I recorded with my lens the various aspects of life in it, from squares and monuments, as well as old cafes and agricultural methods. To southern weddings, and some other special phenomena - including this markouk bread, in addition to photographing at different times - day and night. Summer and winter - from here I cherish my archive in the south and consider it the outcome of my life.

- What about the photography movement in the south in general?
- In the south, we first lack the photographic media outlet that cares and encourages these photographers, and now there is a presence. art of photography . He considered it to be the gateway for photographic art to the south. I would add here that attempts to hold annual photographic exhibitions began in the south, and I participated with three of my fellow journalists in a photo exhibition that was held before the Israeli invasion.
For Lebanon under the title, The South... Tragedy and Nature. The exhibition was a success in terms of its themes and shots. I hope that we will continue with later exhibitions, God willing, and in the near future.