Posts tagged Photography
Poetic Symmetry
Poetic Symmetry

Photographer Ishaq Madan’s 2021 image of Bahraini skateboarders went viral when it was picked up by New York’s MoMA. Today, his practice is more cinematic.

With his ghutra afloat, agal suspended in midair, and arms outstretched like wings, the skater in Shabab Al Mustaqbel became an overnight viral sensation when his image was shown in New York City subway stations in 2022. It was not his identity that captured people’s imagination but what he represented. In a single frame, Bahraini photographer Ishaq Madan had captured the raw and sometimes rebellious energy of youth in an often-misunderstood culture.

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Editor's Picks, FeaturesAnna SeamanPhotography, Ishaq Madan
Forgotten Spaces
Forgotten Spaces

Although Lamya Gargash often turns her lens to forgotten spaces, vacant rooms or objects, it is the trace of human presence that she seeks to capture. In the rapidly modernising UAE, change is a subject that continually draws attention, but in Gargash’s work there is also a kind of stillness. A viewer can sense traces of the people that once inhabited the space, or the forces of nature that are taking over. It is a documentation of transition.

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ReviewsAnna SeamanPhotography, Lamya Gargash
Artist of The People
Artist of The People

Lunging, jumping, and vaulting, dance masters demonstrate capoeira, inviting onlookers in Sharjah’s Arts Square to join them. Few will have guessed that the 60-something man in loose white trousers and a light pink T-shirt, part of the crowd, was the artist Hassan Hajjaj. He organised the workshop as part of Sharjah Biennial 15 in February as a way to engage the public with his documentary Gnawa Capoeira Brothahood (2023). A deeply personal project that took two decades to come to fruition, it traces the historical similarities between Gnawa, a Moroccan performance art rooted in Sufi music, and the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira.

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Most Popular, ProfilesAnna SeamanPhotography, Adriana Lima, Aleaxander Nilere, Alo Wala, Hassan Hajjaj, Jajjah, Kesh Angels, Lynette Yiodam-BoakyeComment