Gulf Photo Plus Announce Major Collaboration For GPP Photo Week 2019

Gulf Photo Plus (GPP), Dubai’s centre for photography, today announced the headline exhibition for GPP Photo Week 2019. The Shortest Distance Between Us: Stories from the Arab Documentary Photography Program will be presented by The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), Alserkal Avenue and Gulf Photo Plus (GPP), 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 and closing on February 9th, concurrently with GPP Photo Week.

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 El 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 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.

In addition to the exhibition, The Shortest Distance Between Us: Stories from the Arab Documentary Photography Program, the program will also be supported by artist talks and an edition of GPP Slidefest on February 5 featuring additional recipients from the past 4 years of the ADPP, allowing audience members to experience a wider array of documentary projects from the Arab region.

Speaking ahead of the announcement of the exhibition, Vilma Jurkute, Director of Alserkal Avenue commented that “supporting homegrown artistic talent and their initiatives has always been part of Alserkal Avenue’s mandate. Gulf Photo Plus, as a longstanding partner of Alserkal Avenue, and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, are both pioneers in nurturing and cultivating the photography ecosystem in this part of the world. It is important for us to work with them for this next edition of GPP Photo Week, to serve as a platform to provide a voice for burgeoning photographers based in the GCC and Arab region.”

Rima Mismar, Executive Director of The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, also said “our ultimate aim in working with our grantees is not only to help them to realize their photography projects, but also for their work to be able to speak to an audience and provoke conversations and thought, and to develop a deeper understanding of our region. Here in Dubai, a crossroads of the Arab world, this exhibition with work from Egypt, the Levant and North Africa, will be able to reach just that audience.”

Mohamed Somji, Director of Gulf Photo Plus, added that “bringing the ADPP photographers and their work to Dubai for an exhibition in Alserkal Avenue actually represents a profound shift in the photography world in the UAE. This work demonstrates the potential of photography not as an image-making tool, but as a powerful language to tell the many nuanced stories coming from our region, and gives all photographers something to aspire to.”

The exhibition exemplifies Gulf Photo Plus’ commitment to nurturing talent from the region, an ethos that is shared by The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, Alserkal Avenue, Prince Claus Fund and Magnum Foundation. It also presents an additional interpretation to this year’s theme of Get Closer as GPP Photo Week strives to get closer to photographers and their subjects in the region as it celebrates the 15th annual GPP Photo Week, the longest running photography event in the region.

The Shortest Distance Between Us: Stories from the Arab Documentary Photography Program will open in Concrete, Alserkal Avenue, on Monday, February 4th at 7:30 PM and will continue until February 9th at 7 pm.