I have some good news to share with you. I've been so busy the past few days, so I've not had a chance to post this earlier. Yours truly is going to be in a group show at The Empty Quarter called Women on the Verge which opens tomorrow, Monday, 19th March and you are all invited.
The Empty Quarter is one of my favourite photography galleries and my favourite gallery in Dubai, and the show is curated by one of my favourite people in the world of photograpy, Hester Keijser, aka the acclaimed Mrs Deane. The exhibition includes a group of well respected photographers and artists, so I feel very honored and proud to be part of this show which includes:
Fourteen sharp, courageous, talented, passionate and inspirational women photographers from the Middle East take center stage in Women on the Verge, an expansive group show held concurrent with Art Dubai and Art Week.
Here's a small selection of photos from the exhibition which includes an interesting mix of topics. If you are in the neighbourhood tomorrow, please drop by and say hello. Boushra Almutawakel, Laura Boushnak, Leila Alaoui and I will be there. The exhibition will run till 30th April 2012.
Exhibition details: Dates: Opening 19th March, 6-10pm. The exhibition will run till 30th April. Venue: The Empty Quarter, Gate Village, Bldg 2, DIFC Dubai, UAE Phone: +971 4 323 1210
The Sultans of Silver is the latest exhibition at The Empty Quarter which is on till 10th March. The exhibition features fine art black and white photographs, inspired by the culture and heritage from the Gulf region.
Here are the photographers included in this exhibition:
Joseph Hoflehner (Austria) an internationally acclaimed photographer known for his black and white landscapes. He has extensively traveled in the Arab region, including Yemen, the Emirates and now Zanzibar, with its many traces as part of the Omani culture, to which it is connected through a shared history.
Nasser Al Hameli (UAE) is one of the few large format photographers in the UAE. Out of his passion for alternative photography and his love for the photographic print, he has taught himself, among others with the aid of online resources, to make exquisite platinum palladium prints.
Omar Al Zaabi (UAE) has a series called Other Life, all shot in expressive contrasts, revealing a more existential, perhaps darker and rarely glimpsed side of life as experienced in his home country.
Sami Nabeel (Jordan) currently lives in London. He writes about Nocturnes, a series strongly influenced by classical music:
The forces of nature are much stronger than the forces deployed by us as individuals. We must understand not to fight these forces, but merge with them to achieve striking results. Having visited a location and made up my mind to photograph, I never look for a photograph. The photograph finds me and says 'I am here, take me', and I say 'yes, I can hear you'. When making my images, I do not allow what use they will have to cloud my mind. I believe that my art should be purposeless; it should not be diminished by serving other agendas. Nocturnes reflect my harmony with nature they are tranquil, expressive, lyrical and evocative.
Third Rock from the Sun - A Journey into Space is the latest exhibition at The Empty Quarter and it is splendid. It's on till 31st January and if you are in Dubai, make sure you don't miss it.
The exhibition features the following series and the whole thing just works together in one space:
Space: the Final Frontier. An infinite supply of knowledge and resources await us, just outside our atmosphere. Since the beginning of time, humans have looked up at the sky wondering what exactly was up there. Five hundred years ago, Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic, using the stars to guide him. Today, modern explorers are charting a course that may eventually take humanity out among the stars themselves. It's not so easy to instill in the public the same brand of wonder and nationalist pride that the Space Race evoked from 1958 to 1975.
Although many no longer agree, space exploration is one of the most important factors that will blast the human race into the future. The year 2011 marks the 42th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the centennial of Futurism, and the quadricentennial of the Newtonian telescope. In the same year, it was announced that Virgin Galactic plans to build its first commercial space port in Abu Dhabi. What better time than now to look back on the past and toward the future of space travel, that ultimate flight of fancy of the human imagination?
Sahara Surreal is a new exhibition that opened at The Empty Quarter on 7th September and will be on till 14th October 2011. It's a group exhibition that includes photography and design projects. The gallery describes the show "trails the bandwidth of 21st century life in the Great Desert, unhinging stereotypes along the way". It touches upon injustice, empowerment, displaced people and environmental solutions. Please don't miss this exhibition. It makes you observe, think and question.
Here's a small selection of work from this exhibition.
The Dynamics of Dust by Philippe Dudouit Philippe Dudouit is one of the few to visit the Tuareg rebels of Mali and Niger dwelling in zones off-limit to tourists due to unsettling political changes. His photos are eerie but beautiful.
The Tuaregs have always gone through the Sahara without asking anything to anyone. For a long time, they would lead tens of thousands of western tourists into the most beautiful places of the desert. For a long time, these areas were a racing track for the caravan of cars, dune buggies, motorbikes and trucks in the Paris-Dakar rally.
But now, the game has changed. At first glance, the rise of Islamic terrorism is to blame: it would have transformed the balance of the Sahara. But looking at things closer, the reality is much more complex. The area is now facing a cocktail made out of the local population, armed Salafists groups, drug traffickers and smugglers, topped off with international interests jockeying to win mining rights.
Today, almost all of Mali, Niger and Mauritania have become a red zone.
Journalist, pictured in Tifariti, in Polisario controlled Western Sahara (Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic).
I was born in El Aaiún refugee camp in 1984. I thought when I was a little girl that it was the nicest place in the world because I don't know anything other than the camps. My childhood was very nice. We played all night, we never had anything to fear, even the darkness. When I was ten I went to Spain with the Vacations in Peace program, that is when I began to realise we were refugees but I didn't stop liking home. I think wherever I go I will always like this place, we are altogether here, we share everything.
I think the world has betrayed the Polisario. The Polisario wanted peace and had faith in the process and they gave a lot for the chance to create peace but I think the world didn't appreciate that, especially the UN and Morocco. The people are ready to sacrifice themselves for independence. The ceasefire had advantages in that the Polisario had the chance to organise everything in the camps and now the people are educated and we understand democracy but the negative is we are still here, without land, and relying on international aid. I hope the Sahrawi will have the chance for a referendum to decide their future, that's all. I hope the chance comes through peace.
48, human rights activist, pictured near El Aaiún city, in Moroccan controlled Western Sahara (Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic).
In 1987 I was arrested along with five hundred others for trying to organise a demonstration on independence before a big United Nations visit. They held eighty including nineteen women. They interrogated me and used physical and psychological torture. They would put chemicals in my hair that made me faint. I was electrocuted on the arms and back and was bitten by dogs. Later they would laugh and say that there are no dogs and I must be imagining things. It was the same thing you see in Iraq but here we have no media attention to show it. I was released in 1991 along with three hundred and twenty four people, some of whom had been held since the invasion, seventy eight were women.
We have a conviction that we will achieve independence but it depends on international pressure, our case it very just and fair. It [pressure] will come from the allies of Morocco, like France, the US and Spain. We have no direct contact with Polisario but we share the same gaols. As a defender of human rights we are all about a peaceful solution. Whether the Polisario want to go back to war is up to them but as a civil society we are calling for a peaceful solution and this will come from international pressure.
Plastic Gold by Florie Salnot Florie Salnot have designed a technique and some specific tools to enable the Saharawirefugees to produce pieces of jewelry with the very limited resources, i.e. plastic bottles and sand, which are available in their camps. The aim is to offer Saharawis a sustainable way for generating income and to reduce dependency on humanitarian aid, and to also provide them with an open-source technique and tools with which they can design their own pieces and invigorate their local craft traditions in an original way.
You can read more about The Plastic Bottle project here, a project was enabled thanks Sandblast, an arts and human rights charity working with the indigenous people from Western Sahara, the Saharawis whose identity and culture is threatened by the impact of exile and Morocco's occupation. Sandblast wants to empower the Saharawis, to tell their own story, promote their own culture and earn a living through the arts.
Here's a video where you can see the technique designed by Florie Salnot and the workshops she conducted.
Desert Cities by Aglaïa Konrad Aglaïa Konrad focuses on the programmed "concrete-ization" of the desert in Egypt's struggling satellite cities. This reminded me of some of the projects in Dubai, where supply exceeds demands and some of the large scale constructions of projects that will always look at odds with its surroundings.
Aglaïa Konrad discovered the Egyptian 'Desert Cities' during a brief visit to Cairo in 1992, becoming intrigued by the vast scale of this long term project. The project she instigated, explores the application of modernist principles to the architecture of the new cities that have been emerging over the last 15 years, but still seem hardily occupied.
Aglaïa Konrad focuses a direct gaze on cities like New Cairo, Golf City, Utopia or Badr City, spotlighting an improbable dialogue between imported models and vernacular elements, constructions and sites, desert and communities, modernity and tradition.
Dune by Magnus Larsson Architect Magnus Larsson proposes a fascinating landscape project which I think many in this region should listen to.
He proposes a 6,000km long wall of artificially solidified sandstone architecture that would span the Sahara Desert, east to west, offering a combination of refugee housing and a "green wall" against the future spread of the desert.
Architects create spaces that accommodate human activity. As opposed to many of its contemporary counterparts, Dune is not so much focused on the styling of that activity, as on the supporting of it. While designed to visually seduce, Dune is not primarily a formal exercise, but a social, ecological, cultural one. How are we to live with the desert, in the desert, within the desert?
Solar Sinter by Markus Kayser In his desert manufacturing experiments, Markus Kayser focuses the raw energy of the Saharan sun in laserbeams that cut wood and make glass from sand.
In a world increasingly concerned with questions of energy production and raw material shortages, this project explores the potential of desert manufacturing, where energy and material occur in abundance. In this experiment sunlight and sand are used as raw energy and material to produce glass objects using a 3D printing process, that combines natural energy and material with high-tech production technology.
Solar-sintering aims to raise questions about the future of manufacturing and triggers dreams of the full utilisation of the production potential of the world's most efficient energy resource - the sun. Whilst not providing definitive answers, this experiment aims to provide a point of departure for fresh thinking.
Exhibition details Date: 7th September - 14th October 2011 Venue: The Empty Quarter, Gate Village, Bldg 2, DIFC Dubai, UAE Phone: +971 4 323 1210
We in India take our weddings very seriously. Sometimes, a wedding set is designed for impact -- it needs to strike an everlasting impression with guests who might arrive in the thousands, sending out a clear message of the family's social standing. At other times, the sets are traditional containers within which a marriage takes place. I have been documenting wedding sets and little associated details at weddings because I find them to be fascinating metaphors of my country's penchant for order and chaos; colour and noise; and the peculiar sense of taste and design or the lack thereof.
Michael Bühler-Rose was born in New Jersey (1980) and currently lives and works in New York. About his series "Indian Still Lifes"
Beyond the beauty of the Dutch Still-life lays the evidence of Dutch colonial power: its imports of exotic spices and goods from India. You can currently purchase any of these Indian imports, plus anything else you can find in the streets of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, or Chennai, in the “Little India” sections of various major cities of the world. These photographs feature a mixture of contemporary and traditional items purchased in these “Little Indias,” while referencing the lighting, compositions, and scale of the Dutch still-life tradition. They create an aesthetic experience of near recognition while still allowing disorienting puncture points to come through. Although visually similar to the Dutch still-life, these pictures do not evidence Western colonial power but rather a reverse of power, of India settling the West.
Neil Chowdhury is an artist working in photography and digital media. His work explores the relationships between individuals, their societies, and environments in different cultures. His “Waking from Dreams of India.” incorporates photography, video, audio, and photomontage to chronicle his journeys, physical and imaginative, as he explores and comes to terms with his Indian heritage.
This work tells the story of my lifelong dream of exploring India, the land of my father’s birth. He died without telling me much about the culture in which he grew up or the story of his early life there. Growing up in the United States, isolated from Indian culture fostered the cultivation of imaginative fantasy about the land of my ancestry. My knowledge of India ripened from exoticized Western media accounts. None of this prepared me for the discovery of the circumstances that drove my father away from his family as a teenager, or the actual masala mix of complexity, misery and beauty of contemporary India that I finally had the opportunity to see for myself. Having now made several trips, and collected a wealth of photographic images, videotape, and journal writings, I am shaping this material into a body of work that connects and contrasts my youthful fantasies of India with my adult experience building a relationship with the land of my ancestry. I hope to symbolize the merging of the actual lived journey with the expectations I carried for half a lifetime.
Priya Kambli was born in India and moved to the United States at age 18 carrying her entire life in one suitcase that weighed about 20 lbs. She began her artistic career in the States and her work has always been informed by her experience as a migrant.
My photographs visually express the notion of transience and split cultural identity caused by the act of migration. I have been viewing this issue through the lens of my own personal history and cultural journey from India to the United States. This journey left me feeling disconnected- unable to anchor myself in any particular cultural framework. I have therefore formed a hybrid identity, a patching together of two cultures within one person. In my work I explore absence, loss and genealogy through the use of my own family snapshots. These personal artifacts are recontextualized alongside fragmented images and staged imagery to reveal the correlations between generations, cultures and memory.
Vidisha Saini is a photographer who also also teaches, researches and writes. Her practice frequently draws on the unseen details of her own life. It encompasses still life studies and portraits, which address questions concerning identity, gender, sexuality and culture.
‘Behrupiyas’ are costumed performers changing looks every forty-two days; and transforming their mannerism according to the garb and character they adorn. They are a cluster of lower caste communities in India who are nomadic. Under the patronage of monarch they provided their services as messengers to another kingdom; today, they perform on streets, and collect alms door to door. Their looks are mostly inspired by popular culture; history, religion and politics documenting the visual culture of India.
I refer to these portraits of the ‘Behrupiyas’ as ‘Pratibimb’ (meaning reflection); like living with an alter ego. It is a reflection of the certainty that co-exists with the uncertainty within me. “Sometimes I wear glasses, because I have no gray hair.”
Zubin Pastakia is a photographer living and working in Bombay, India. After studying economics in college, he pursued further education in film and cultural studies. His photographic projects to date are a synthesis of these interests as they explore and trace the interstices of shifting cultural, economic and representational value. His series is my favourite. Can you guess why?
The Cinemas Project series visually traces the lives of Bombay’s disappearing single-screen cinema halls. Once symbols of modernity, the relationship that many of these halls share with the city has changed significantly as colonial Bombay metamorphoses into "post-industrial" Mumbai. On the one hand, this collection of images is a repository of the architectural form and interior detail of these buildings that range from the classic to the idiosyncratic. These buildings seem to exist today in defiance of the generic aesthetic and cultural experience of the city’s new multiplexes.
However, to view these halls merely nostalgically—and to cast them off to history—would be to deny them a place in the present; our lived present that is in constant play with time past and pending. As I explored these cinemas, which are simultaneously spaces of dwelling, labour and spectatorship, they revealed themselves to be sites of deep affective investment, traces of which are evident in every nook and corner.
Exhibition details Dates and timings: 14th June - 31st July 2011 (Sat-Thu: 9am-10pm; Fri: 3pm-10pm) Location: The Empty Quarter, Gate Village, Building 2, DIFC, Dubai, United Arab Emirates Phone: +971 4 323 1210
Over the past couple of days I've been reading so many articles and obituaries about them. Both men risked their lives to show us the reality of war, both so talented and committed to their jobs that they clearly loved very much.
(Note: The link to the trailer below will take you to a separate site as I could not find a version I could embed here. The trailer is in German language without English subtitles although the screening will include English subtitles.)
Shot on location in the still smoldering streets of Beirut, Circle of Deceit is a film of riveting tension and passionate eloquence. Director Volker Schlöndorff (The Legend of Rita, The Ogre, The Tin Drum) combines war film verve, documentary immediacy to yield a violent yet character-rich film that’s both politically charged and personally moving.
Grateful for a respite from his imploding marriage, Hamburg newspaperman Georg (Bruno Ganz - Luther, Wings of Desire) arrives in civil war-torn Beirut to chronicle the bloody Lebanese war. Inside a shell-pitted hotel, Georg and his photographer colleague Hoffman (cult director Jerzy Skolimowski - Deep End, The Shout) join a cynical international coterie of competitive fellow journalists. Outside, they take their lives in their own hands, dodging both Christian and Palestinian bullets and conducting interviews that are always just a trigger pull away from becoming executions. When Georg’s affair with a beautiful German ex-pat widow (Fassbinder icon Hanna Schygulla) evolves into something more than an indulgence, Beirut’s bloody whirlpool of brutality threatens to claim Georg’s neutrality and his civilized self-control.
Without taking sides or pulling punches, Schlöndorff’s meticulous direction renders both the lethal chaos of urban warfare and the moral tug-of-war of modern Mid-East politics with equally sensitive precision. Probing an ethical minefield of journalism, exploitation, war, and murder, Circle of Deceit is hauntingly compassionate, shockingly realistic, and "a superior film in every respect." (Leonard Maltin, Movie & Video Guide)
The Americanization of Emily will be screened at The Empty Quarter in Dubai this Friday, 25th March. The film screening is part Known as a great anti-war film, seems like a fitting movie to wac
The film is part of the The Embedded Eye film series that the gallery is screening in conjunction with its latest exhibition, The Spectacle of War. The Americanization of Emily is known as one of the great anti-war movies and although made in 1964, it is just as relevant today. Looking at the absurdities of war with some great lines, I am really looking forward to this. Read this review by Rick Gee if you need further convincing to watch this film.
I don't want to know what's good, or bad, or true. I let God worry about the truth. I just want to know the momentary fact about things. Life isn't good, or bad, or true. It's merely factual, it's sensual, it's alive. My idea of living sensual facts are you, a home, a country, a world, a universe. In that order. I want to know what I am, not what I should be.
In wartime London just before D-Day, Lieut. Comdr. Charlie Madison (James Garner), an aide to eccentric Rear Admiral Jessup (Melvyn Douglas), specializes in supplying the top Navy officers with luxuries such as party girls. Madison is an exponent of cowardice as a virtue because he believes reverence of heroism promotes war. He falls in love with Emily Barham (Julie Andres), his British motorpool driver, a young woman who has lost her husband and brother in the war. Admiral Jessup is obsessed with the idea that the Army has a better image than the Navy and is determined that the first dead man on Omaha Beach on D-Day be a sailor. Jessup orders Madison to photograph the D-Day landing, and, despite his protests which alienate Emily, Madison is forced at gunpoint to be the first man to land on Omaha Beach. Running from the bombs, Madison trips a land mine and is reported to be the first man killed in the invasion. Photographs of his supposedly dead body appear in the newspapers, and he becomes a hero, but later he is found alive. Admiral Jessup then organizes a hero's welcome for Madison, but he threatens to confess the true story of his cowardice to the press. Emily, in a reversal of sentiment, promises to marry him if he will keep his secret, and Madison agrees to remain quiet. (Synopsis via TCM.com)
Event details: Date and time: Friday, 25th March at 8pm Venue: The Empty Quarter, DIFC, Gate Village, Building 2 Phone: +971 4 323 1210 Free admission
The Spectacle of War is the new exhibition at The Empty Quarter that opens tonight and will go on till 30th April 2011. Presenting for the first time in the region a number of multi-published artists including whose work has been exhibited in noted international institutions such as the Tate Modern, the Vienna Secession, the SFMOMA and Musée de l'Élysée, Switzerland - the exhibition includes work by Benjamin Lowy, Richard Mosse, Spencer Murphy, Phil Nesmith and Trevor Paglen and takes a look at contemporary war.
Tied in with this exhibition is a film series called The Embedded Eye which will be screened on the following days. All films start at 8pm and admission is free.
18 March - Restrepo (2010) Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger
Contemporary war is presented as a post-modern spectacle, with fluid roles and changing seat orders for viewers, actors, directors and back-stage technicians alike. Visualization of the spectacle has become a vital, viral and seminal activity for all parties involved, both off-stage and on-stage. This visualization happens on different scales, uses a range of technologies, is presented from numerous viewpoints, broadcasted through competing channels, and eventually re-enacted in modern video games. One may say that modern man consumes the war as much as he is consumed by it.
In modern warfare, the camera lens has always been the predestined 'weapon' of choice for those tasked with the visualization of the different acts as they are played out, including the stages of preparation and the enduring aftermath of the war. This is no coincidence, if we follow Heidegger's thinking, that 'the fundamental event of modernity is the conquest of the world as picture', and its decisive unfolding a battle of perspectives, 'for the sake of which mankind brings into play the unlimited violence of the calculation, planning, and breeding of everything.' It is within this constellation that imaging and mapping technologies have seen a viral growth since the onset of the modern age, with a network of satellites, public and secret ones, now spanning the globe.
Photography matters when it comes to war, in all its shapes, roles and technological reincarnations. The Spectacle of War testifies of this at times uncomfortable liaison by presenting several inroads into the spectacle that war has become, combining works of strategically operating artists, experimental film directors and innovative photojournalists with commercial video games based on the Iraq war and material culled from the military and its corporate arms manufacturers itself. Together with visions of near-future deployment of unmanned vehicles, exoskeletons or nanobots, they might be the closest we can come to drawing up a map of the battleground on which our wars are fought.
Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje | Al-Sayyid Abd al-Ghaffar: View on the big mosque during a samalat at the Ka'aba
Wishing you all a very happy Eid Al Adha. To coincide with this year's Hajj and Eid Al Adha, The Empty Quarter in Dubai is exhibiting a selection of early photographs of Mecca taken in the late 1800s.
Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (8 February 1857 - 26 June 1936) was a Dutch scholar of Oriental cultures and languages and Advisor on Native Affairs to the colonial government of the Netherlands East Indies. He became a theology student at Leiden University in 1874. He received his doctorate at Leiden in 1880 with his dissertation ‘Het Mekkaansche Feest’ ("The Festivities of Mecca"). He became a professor at the Leiden School for Colonial Civil Servants in 1881 and visited Mecca in 1884-1885 as one of the first Western scholars of Oriental cultures.
Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje | Al-Sayyid Abd al-Ghaffar: View on the western part of the Mina valley during the Hajj
Snouck Hurgronje decided to travel to Mecca to study the lives of Muslims and the Hajj at first hand. As well as being a theological historian, he was also an ethnologist, who made use of the most modern resources, such as photography. His trip to Mecca, of which the book Mecca (with a collection of prints) is the lasting result, was a 'dangerous adventure', according to Dr. Witkam. For non-Muslims the holy city was strictly out of bounds. Snouck converted to Islam and lived, with his Islamic wife, as a Muslim among Muslims. In 1885 the adventure came to a sudden end, when the Turkish governor ordered his immediate departure from Mecca and Arabia. He left behind the wife with whom he had lived in Mecca.
Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje | Al-Sayyid Abd al-Ghaffar: Hajji camp east of Mount Arafat In 1889, his Bilder aus Mekka was published, and consisted of 20 plates depicting the holy city of Meccaa, the Ka’aba and the pilgrims gathering on the surrounding planes. Although Snouck Hurgronje published this album under his own name, it is almost certain that the images in it were taken by a local eye doctor by the name of Al-Sayyid Abd al-Ghaffar. For years no one questioned the authorship of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje as the maker of his famous Photographs from Mecca, an album he published under his own name. It wasn't until 1981 that Al-Sayyid Abd al-Ghaffar, a physician (and eye doctor) from Mecca, was re-identified as the original photographer. Painstaking scientific research has brought his achievements to the forefront again, recognizing him as most certainly the first Meccan and Arabian photographer.
Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje | Al-Sayyid Abd al-Ghaffar: Group portrait of Sharif Yahya with his riding camel, his slave and two sharifs of lower rank
Another fascinating angle to this exhibition is the Abu Dhabi-based historian and journalist Lizette van Hecke, who wrote her thesis on Snouck Hurgronje, his life and his work which can be downloaded here. Not only does it give us more insight into Snouck Hurgronje's life, but also his research on Islam.
Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje | Al-Sayyid Abd al-Ghaffar: The Ka'aba in Mekka
The exhibition is on till 6th December 2010 and I strongly suggest you go see these rare photos. Compare them to the recent photos of Hajj 2010 published by The Big Picture and you will see how much Mecca has changed over the past 100 years.
Saturday, March 17, 2012 at 6:26PM 
© Boushra Almutawakel - Fulla (The Look II)
© Dalia Khamissy - 17,000 Missing: A Nation in Denial
© Eman Mohammed - Mohammed Khader feeds pigeons in front of the remains of his house, which was destroyed during Israel's 22-day offensive that ended in January, in Jabaliya, northern Gaza Strip, 16 March 2009.
© Hind Mezaina - Desert Dunes 2
© Laura Boushnak - Cluster Bomb Survivor
© Laura El-Tantawy - In the Shadow of the Pyramids
© Leila Alaoui - The Moroccans - Souk of Boumia (MIddle Atlas)
© Myriam Abdelaziz - Men Dreaming - Hamad irons shirts...and dreams of becoming a famous writer
© Newsha Tavakolian - Listen - Singing woman 
© Rania Matar - A girl and her room - Alia 
© Tanya Habjouqa - Women of Gaza - Mini Vacation
© Tanya Traboulsi - Untitled Tracks - Malikah
© Waheeda Malullah - Colored Photograph no. 14
