BEIRUT: Syrian photojournalist Ammar Abd Rabbo has achieved a rare thing: an art exhibition mainstream enough to attract the attention of television networks, but shocking enough to ensure that though eager to talk about it, some are not willing to show it.His first art exhibition, “Coming Soon,” which opened Thursday at the Ayyam Gallery, features 15 photographs of a naked pregnant woman, many of them life size.

“I thought it would be difficult to show something like this in an Arab capital,” says Abd Rabbo, “but for me they are not shocking photos.

“This woman is very much a strong woman with character. She is daring. She is not an object. She is not here to please a man,” he continues. “She is an Arab and she is a Muslim ... but the message is that she could be anyone – she could be you.”

The 15 individual photographs, artistically grouped on the gallery’s ample wall space to form three diptychs and three triptychs, all feature the same woman, almost 8 months pregnant.

She stands silhouetted in profile, openly displaying her full breasts and round belly, at times sexy, at times pensive, but always allowing the viewer a sense of unusual intimacy, a close-up view of something many women experience, but few are willing or able to share.

Rabbo is a self-confessed Andy Warhol fan and the artist’s influence is clear in a series of four images, all displaying the same silhouette of the pregnant nude. Rabbo has changed the background color in each image, thereby changing the mood of the piece, just as Warhol did in his iconic series of paintings of actress Marilyn Monroe.

From a distance, the images seem stark, pared down, the silhouettes appearing as a flat black shape against a uniform background, the pregnant belly incongruous with the Bond-girl poses and pop-art colors. Viewed close up, however, the photographs, though wreathing the body in shadow, do reveal a three-dimensional depth and an intimate detail which makes them more accessible.

The silhouette retains the woman’s anonymity, even as her body is so intimately revealed. “The silhouette has something magical, you see things that you may not see with the full light and you hide other things,” Rabbo says. “I like the silhouette because a lot of women could see themselves in her.”

Rabbo’s long career as a photojournalist makes him reluctant to digitally manipulate his photographs. “There is nothing added and nothing taken off,” he says. “There are some which show a defect on her skin – I like it this way. She has to be as she is.”

The photographs are his own way of showing “that pregnant women are not ugly; pregnant women are not unsexy,” the artist says. “Pregnant women are gorgeous.”

“I like that veiled women come to see it, I think it’s very interesting,” Rabbo says, nodding at two ladies in hijab who’ve walked into the gallery. “It raises a lot of questions.”

The photographs work on several levels, he explains, as does the title. “Coming Soon,” refers not only to the child in the womb, but also the events of the Arab Spring. “A baby is coming soon in the Arab countries,” he says. “A new society will be born soon. Unfortunately not just in nine months, it might take longer.”

When people see his photos, “I’d like people to see these ideas in them and to wonder about a lot of things,” he says. “To wonder about nudity, to wonder about pregnancy, to wonder about the female body – why is the female body such a problem in our society?”

The general public’s attitude toward nudity and violence, both here and in the U.S. seems to him irrational, even harmful. “You can see a lot of violence on television,” he says. “You can see people killing themselves, killing each other ... violence that is terrible to show to a kid – that’s fine. But when Janet Jackson showed her [breast] at the Super Bowl ... it was like the end of the world.”

Abd Rabbo is currently working on a new series of photos, a different sort of look at what might be “coming soon.”

“The idea is to show who would be the Arab icons in 10 years,” he says. “What would be on posters, or maybe stamps, in 10 years? It’s a bit of political fiction, and graphically it’s very challenging ... I like to imagine who tomorrow’s heroes might be.”

In the meantime he is enjoying seeing the reaction to his controversial nudes. “I don’t see them as scandalous,” he says. “Yesterday someone told me ‘What’s going to happen when you are with God? You’ll be punished for this.’

“I said ‘I don’t think so. Maybe it’s not the same God.’ For me it’s a very nice homage to women, to beauty, to creation ... and it’s all God’s creation.”

Ammar Abd Rabbo’s “Coming Soon” is on display at The Ayyam Gallery in Downtown Beirut until March 2. For more information please call 01-374-450.