Sarah Bahbah

File:Sarah Bahbah, Fool Me Twice, Noah Centineo.jpeg. This piece demonstrates Bahbah's use of captions on her photographs, and her retro-saturation technique.]]

Bahbah studied creative advertising at Curtin University in Western Australia. During her first year of studies, she began photographing music festivals and cultural events, including Firefly.{{Cite interview |last=Bahbah |first=Sarah |interviewer=Jackie Yaeger |title=Artist-in-residence: Sarah Bahbah |url=https://nylon.com/articles/artist-in-residence-sarah-bahbah |access-date=2018-04-17 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180418033301/https://nylon.com/articles/artist-in-residence-sarah-bahbah |archive-date=18 April 2018 |url-status=live |work=NYLON |date=2014-06-24 |language=en}} Writing for Forbes, interviewer Olivia Perez posited that this experience "capturing intimate, private moments within the human experience and bringing them to light" carried forward into her later artwork.

Bahbah places subtitles on her photographs to simulate the appearance of a still from a captioned film. She adopted this style with Instagram in mind, after being inspired by posts on the platform sharing screenshots from subtitled foreign films.{{Cite web |date=2015-12-10 |title=Instagram Photo Series "Summer Without A Pool" Explores Teenage Coming-Of-Age |url=https://nylon.com/articles/summer-without-a-pool |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191024060107/https://nylon.com/articles/summer-without-a-pool |archive-date=24 October 2019 |access-date=2020-03-07 |website=NYLON |language=en}} Bahbah described her works as coming together to "create a serial, episodic quasi-narrative" which is open to interpretation, although "[each] individual piece tells a story on its own". She uses vivid saturation to create a retro colour palette.

Her art is driven by the desire to "create a space where [she] belong[s], a space that [she] could own".{{Cite web |date=2023-04-17 |title=Sarah Bahbah |url=https://1883magazine.com/sarah-bahbah/ |access-date=2024-02-24 |website=1883 Magazine |language=en-GB}} She has expressed that the themes of desire, intimacy, and emotion in her work, and her frequent depiction of taboo subjects such as women's sexuality, stem from the sense of freedom she has gained through her art after being raised in a conservative Christian Middle Eastern household, as a racial minority in a majority-white community. She has also mentioned that her art, and particularly her writing, helps her to manage her OCD and anxiety.{{Cite web |last=Woods |first=Cat |date=2023-05-02 |title=Artist Sarah Bahbah Exposes a Decade Of Self-Confession In 'Dear Love' |url=https://observer.com/2023/05/artist-sarah-bahbah-exposes-a-decade-of-self-confession-in-dear-love/ |access-date=2024-02-24 |website=Observer |language=en-US}}

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File:SarahBahbah SexAndTakeout Pizza.jpeg

The series "Sex and Takeout" was created in 2014 while Bahbah was working as an art director at a Melbourne advertising agency. The 26-photograph series features young women in varying states of nudity eating and posing with fast food.{{Cite news |last=Holt |first=Brianna |date=2020-10-23 |title=Sarah Bahbah Turns Her Lens on the Millennial Condition |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/style/sarah-bahbah-turns-her-lens-on-the-millennial-condition.html |access-date=2024-02-24 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}} The series went viral and Bahbah gained over 50,000 Instagram followers overnight. The images in the series were shared millions of times. In 2019, Bahbah announced that prints of one of her most famous photographs from the series ("Sex and Takeout — Pizza", pictured right), which had previously been available only as an expensive limited-edition print, would be temporarily available at a more affordable price in an effort to "democratize art acquisition".{{Cite web |date=2019-11-15 |title=Viral Photographer Sarah Bahbah Democratizes Art With New Affordable Prints |url=https://hypebae.com/2019/11/sarah-bahbah-sex-and-takeout-pizza-photograph-print-order-price |access-date=2024-02-24 |website=Hypebae}}

Bahbah established her own creative agency, Possy, in 2016. Through Possy, she has worked with GQ and Vogue, shot ad campaigns for Gucci, and directed three music videos for Kygo songs ("Think About You" with Valerie Broussard and "Not OK" with Chelsea Cutler in 2019, and a remix of "What's Love Got to Do with It" starring Laura Harrier in July 2020).{{Cite magazine |last1=Shaffer |first1=Claire |last2=Legaspi |first2=Althea |date=2020-07-17 |title=Tina Turner, Kygo Release New 'What's Love Got to Do With It' Remix |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/tina-turner-kygo-whats-love-got-to-do-with-it-remix-1028928/ |archive-url= |archive-date= |access-date=2020-07-18 |magazine=Rolling Stone |language=en-US}}

"I Could Not Protect Her" is a visual poem released in 2018 unpacking the artist's trauma from childhood sexual abuse.{{Cite web |date=2020-11-04 |title="3eib! What will people think?" - Sarah Bahbah's journey to liberation |url=https://www.azeemamag.com/stories/sarah-bahbah-3eib |access-date=2024-02-24 |website=AZEEMA |language=en-US}}Ward, Anne Marie. "Her Body of Work." PhD diss., Fordham University, 2019. The photos present the conflicting sentiments felt by the subject; subtitles convey a simultaneous desire for approval from the abuser and a strong detest for his actions. To accompany the final post in the series, Bahbah conducted an Instragram livestream wherein she read aloud the poem she had written as part of the series.{{Cite web |last=Papisova |first=Vera |date=2018-06-01 |title=Photographer Sarah Bahbah Opens Up About Surviving Sexual Abuse |url=https://www.teenvogue.com/gallery/sarah-bahbah-exclusive-interview-surviving-child-abuse |access-date=2024-02-24 |website=Teen Vogue |language=en-US}} The poem concludes, "I could not protect her, because I could not protect myself."

In an interview following the launch of this series with Teen Vogue, Bahbah spoke about how being silenced as a child informs her current work:

As a child, I was constantly dismissed. The disregard for my existence raised me into an apathetic adult- completely disassociated from my emotions. It was only until my trauma resurfaced that I understood that my work had become a projection of my childhood. Through my art I had begun to manifest freedom. My sole intent in my work and my being is to practice transparency of my emotions, and to express, express, express, as for so long I didn't have a voice. Through my art I'm creating a safe space for expression for myself, and in doing so, I hope to empower others to do the same.

In 2020, Bahbah released a series titled "3eib!" (pronounced "ay-ab"), a term meaning "shame" in Arabic (the series is titled "Shame on Me!" in English).{{Cite web |last=DeFillipis |first=Madeline |date=2023-08-12 |title=Sarah Bahbah: An Artist Of and For Our Generation |url=https://www.courtauldian.com/single-post/sarah-bahbah-an-artist-of-and-for-our-generation |access-date=2024-02-24 |website=The Courtauldian |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=June |first=Sophia |date=2024-02-20 |title=Sarah Bahbah Announces New Book "Dear Love" |url=https://www.nylon.com/life/sarah-bahbah-book-dear-love-exclusive |access-date=2024-02-24 |website=Nylon |language=en}} The self-portrait series is the first to feature Bahbah in front of the camera, and the first series in which the photos' subtitles are written in both English and Arabic. The series touches on the same themes of empowerment, self-love, and desire as many of Bahbah's other works, but this time specifically centred around the experiences of Arab women. She chose the title "3eib" to preemptively reclaim the word, which she realized would be leveraged against her in "the Arab world" as a result of the series.{{Cite web |last=Shacknai |first=Gabby |title=With Latest Series '3eib,' Artist Sarah Bahbah Explores A Whole New Terrain: Herself |url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabbyshacknai/2020/09/28/with-latest-series-3eib-artist-sarah-bahbah-explores-a-whole-new-terrain-herself/ |access-date=2024-02-24 |website=Forbes |language=en}}

In 2016, Bahbah's collaboration with Butter, a fried chicken restaurant in Sydney, drew criticism for its display of Bahbah's images of nude women throughout the dining area and on the restaurant's website.{{cite news |last=Harris |first=Amy |date=2016-02-21 |title=Breasts, thighs and bad taste on menu |url=https://www.pressreader.com/australia/the-sunday-telegraph-sydney/20160221/281629599336045 |work=The Sunday Telegraph |page=13}} Although the restaurant and Bahbah came out in defence of the photographs, with Bahbah explaining her intent to portray female empowerment, some patrons found the restaurant's theming degrading.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}

In 2018, singer Selena Gomez was accused of copying Bahbah's visual style without credit in her music video "Back to You".{{cite web |last=Anastasiou |first=Zoe |date=2018-06-17 |title=Selena Gomez Has Been Accused Of Plagiarising An Australian Artist In Her 'Back To You' Video |url=https://www.elle.com.au/culture/selena-gomez-sarah-bahbah-back-to-you-17771 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190116200749/https://www.elle.com.au/culture/selena-gomez-sarah-bahbah-back-to-you-17771 |archive-date=16 January 2019 |access-date=2019-01-15 |website=Elle Australia}} Bahbah's official response acknowledged that she does not own the use of subtitles on images, but claimed that her "recognizable style of work" has made her the ""go-to for this type of style" as an "industry standard". She further stated that she was "flattered that so many have referenced me in Selena's latest work" and that she was disappointed that the accusations had "overshadowed" her recent work shining a light on child sexual abuse. Gomez never responded to the accusations.

• {{official website|http://www.sarahbahbah.com}}
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhKL_M9r8eg Interview by Anas Bukhash]

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Category:Living people

Category:Australian women photographers

Category:1991 births