Myriam Boulos Honored with 2025 Foam Paul Huf Award at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam has announced Myriam Boulos as the recipient of the prestigious 2025 Foam Paul Huf Award. A Lebanese photographer previously recognized as a Foam Talent in 2022, Boulos is celebrated for her compelling photographic narratives that confront the complex socio-political realities of her home country. Her work consistently offers a powerful lens through which to understand contemporary visual storytelling and its impact.
Exploring Myriam Boulos' Vision at Foam Fotografiemuseum
Visitors to Foam Fotografiemuseum will find that Boulos' photography resonates with a profound sense of urgency and intimacy. Her art gives renewed depth to the idea that "the personal is political," making visible the often-hidden societal frameworks that shape individual lives. Through her lens, Boulos explores themes of identity, struggle, and resilience, inviting viewers to engage with subjects that are both deeply personal and universally significant.
Boulos' early series, Nightshift (2015), ventured into Beirut's industrial nightlife, capturing the raw desire for expression and release outside societal norms. This was followed by Tenderness (2018), which shifted to intimate private spaces, revealing moments of softness intertwined with vulnerability. These projects set the stage for her later internationally acclaimed work, Tell the Trees to Smile.
A Look at Her Award-Winning Photography and Impact
Featured in Foam Magazine #61, Tell the Trees to Smile documented the aftermath of the 2020 Beirut port explosion. Boulos intimately captured the emotions of those affected, creating portraits of friends and strangers amidst the city's debris. Her captions, often the words of her subjects, highlight her close relationship with Beirut and its inhabitants, portraying the city as a shared experience of suffering and endurance.
In What’s Ours (2023), Boulos ventured into daylight, both literally and politically, to document a decade of crisis in Lebanon. This series, compiled into her first photobook, chronicles the lives of everyday people navigating corruption and resistance, particularly focusing on the 2019 17 October Revolution. Her images, combined with diary fragments, capture the public upheaval and its personal toll.
Her ongoing project, Sexual Fantasies (2021), explores the intimate stories and desires of women and people socialized as women. This work emerged from a need to create a space for self-liberation away from patriarchal structures, presenting bodies not solely as sites of suffering but of desire and reclaimed narrative control. Boulos’ consistent use of her camera to illuminate what is often kept in the dark, whether through literal flash or thematic exploration, redefines photojournalism as a mirror of identity and a means of resistance.
Myriam Boulos’ recognition with the Foam Paul Huf Award underlines the museum's commitment to showcasing artists who not only document history but also shape our understanding of the visual world. Her work serves as a powerful reminder of photography's role in claiming visibility and defining personal narratives. Learn more about the Foam Paul Huf Award.
Myriam Boulos holds a master’s degree in photography from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at ICP (New York) and Huis Marseille (Amsterdam), and published in prominent photography and lifestyle magazines. She has received numerous accolades, including the Eugene Smith Fellowship, and joined Magnum as a nominee in 2021. Her photobook, What's Ours, was published by Aperture in 2023.
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