Directory

Vicky Mokbel was born and raised in Beirut. In 1985, due to the civil war, she was forced to move to Paris where she graduated from the Icart Photo school with a European Bachelor of Photography. This immersion allowed her to rub shoulders with big names of the photography world, namely her professor Jean-Luc Monterosso, founder and director of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.

In 1988, she became the assistant of photographer Francois Henry in Paris and worked with him for 5 years. The studio was in charge of major advertising campaigns for renowned European firms.

Through this experience, she trained her eye and strengthened her technique. In 1993, she returned to Beirut to start her own studio. Since then, she has been collaborating with advertising agencies, private clients and has been working on private orders in the Middle East.

Vicky’s love story with photography allowed her to work with a wide array of subjects and experiment with different formats (Sinar large format, Hasselblad medium format 6X6 and 24×36 reflex). Since the beginning, she developed a fondness for the 1:1 square, a format that over time established itself as her favorite. She specialized in advertising photography and worked for clients such as M&C Saatchi, Lowe Pimo, Leo Burnett, Impact Bbdo, Procter&Gamble, CNBC Arabia…. She also worked with magazines such as Architectural Digest, ArchDaily, Déco Magazine, Laha Magazine… In parallel, she explored black and white photography and focused on portraits that she processed and developed herself.

For this demanding, curious and meticulous photographer whose sensibility to order and attention to detail are reflected in the images she creates, “it’s all a matter of relation”. Moving away from disparate elements, she creates links between colors, lines, shapes, light and shadows, weaving these components together to produce pictures that are often compared to paintings.

After 4 years of traveling around the world and focusing on pieces of contemporary architecture, Vicky now merges her two passions, photography and architecture, in her series “Ubraneyes”. Comprised of urban images taken in different countries with an emphasis on detail, the collection aims to transcend contemporary architecture by putting it out of context, granting it a second lecture, and a second identity too.