Emile Maroun doesn’t plan his shots, he feels them. A Lebanese photographer and visual storyteller, Emile operates on instinct rather than storyboards, capturing intimacy in motion and vulnerability in public. With a background in fashion design from ALBA University and years of experience in styling and art direction, his work moves between the editorial and the emotional. Whether he’s shooting for a local label or walking Beirut’s backstreets with a camera, his images are never still; they breathe, ache, and glow with life.
For this KHAMSA-exclusive editorial, Emile Maroun strips photography down to its purest form: presence. Inspired by the haunting, almost ghost-like melancholy of Mashrou’ Leila’s song “Taxi,” Emile crafted a visual story with no script, no storyboard, and no expectations. Just a girl walking through a noisy city, lost in her own head, and Emile following her with a camera, both of them trying to make sense of the chaos around them.
The shoot unfolds like a quiet film. The model doesn’t pose; she moves. Sometimes aimless, sometimes pulled by a sudden burst of curiosity. They wander through alleyways and wide avenues, past shops, souks, rooftops and broken sidewalks. She pauses under neon signs, gazes into shuttered windows, shares wordless smiles with strangers. What they captured wasn’t staged, it just happened.
Emile calls it “real-time discovery.” Each photo holds a tension between stillness and movement, between intimacy and anonymity. The images reflect the paradox of urban life: how you can feel completely invisible and yet constantly observed. How you can be surrounded by people but stuck in your own bubble of thought. It’s that in-between zone, where the world moves fast but your mind slows down.
So you start asking quiet questions like why am I here? or who do I want to be?
One of the most beautiful things about this shoot is how human it feels. The girl isn’t styled to perfection. Her makeup isn’t airbrushed. Her mood shifts with the light; sometimes defiant, sometimes soft, sometimes simply tired. She’s not trying to impress the camera. She’s just living. And in capturing that, Emile lets us see ourselves in her.
It’s not just a fashion story. It’s a mood. A fleeting feeling. A reminder that even in the middle of overwhelming noise–internal or external–there’s a strange kind of poetry waiting to be noticed. All you need is a camera, a city, and someone willing to walk in its “زواريب” (alleyways).
CREDITS:
Photographer: Emile Maroun (@_e1000__)
Model: Yara Al Sablouny (@yaryello)
Stylist: Mia El Khazen (@miaelkhazen_)
Assistant Stylist: Vanessa Hanna (@iamvanessahanna)
MUA: Yara Massaad (@yara_massaad)
