The Shortest Distance Between Us | Stories from the Arab Documentary Photography Program.
We are very excited to announce the headline exhibition for GPP Photo Week 2019: The Shortest Distance Between Us: Stories from the Arab Documentary Photography Program presented with The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), Alserkal Avenue, in association with the Prince Claus Fund and Magnum Foundation.
The exhibition, curated by Jessica Murray of Al-liquindoi, will be showcased in Concrete, Alserkal Avenue’s iconic space designed to host museum-grade exhibitions, opening on February 4th at 7PM and closing on February 9th.
The exhibition will feature curated works from projects made by seven photographers who were awarded grants and commissions by the Arab Documentary Photography Program (ADPP). ADPP which was established by The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture in partnership with Magnum Foundation and the Prince Claus Fund, provides support and mentorship to photographers from across the Arab region. The program has been an instrumental force in shaping and nurturing self-reflective documentary photography from the Arab world since 2014.
Working across a range of experimental styles of visual storytelling, the exhibition includes:
Stranded: On Life After Imprisonment by Elsie Haddad, which follows men and women through their reentry into society after time in prison in Lebanon.
Intersections by Hicham Gardaf, in which Gardaf explores urban development in Morocco and its subsequent transformations on Moroccan society and identity.
Infertile Crescent by Nadia Bseiso, which follows a controversial pipeline that transports water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, exploring the effects of war and ecological turmoil in the once-fertile crescent of Mesopotamia.
Live, Love Refugee by Omar Imam, in which Imam puts the power into his subjects’ hands, asking Syrian refugees themselves to recreate and compose scenes of their dreams.
West of Life by Zied Ben Romdhane, in which the photographer explores the phosphate mining villages of Tunisia, where poverty persists in spite of phosphate’s contribution to the Tunisian economy.
Moon Dust by Mohamed Mahdy, a project from Wadi El Qamar—Valley of the Moon—in Alexandria, in which the photographer shows the impact of toxic dust from a cement factory on its surrounding residential neighbourhood.
Homemade by Heba Khalifa, a sobering and honest examination of having a female body and all the accompanying expectations and forms of abuse that one can endure as a result of one’s femaleness in Egyptian society.
These documentary photography projects allow the viewer to experience issues affecting the region without the tropes that so often dilute stories into statistics and visual repetition.
All Exhibition Prints supported by EPSON Middle East
