The reflective strips of his oil worker’s uniform are dazzling. Light splays from his wrists and shoulders, and this outpouring exalts him in the monochrome image, makes him larger than life. We see the man as his son sees him. The boy hangs from his father’s grip, legs crossed in playful acrobatics. He looks up at him in glee, in reverence. The man is just about to leave for work and the boy wants to get as much time as he can with him.
The photograph by Sathish Kumar is one in a series the artist is showcasing at Vantage Point 13 in the Photography Gallery in Sharjah. The exhibition, held annually since 2013, has moved to a new location. It will also take place once every two years moving forward.
These changes coincide with Vantage Point’s revised format. In previous runs, the exhibition presented works by dozens of artists at a time, from photojournalism and photo essays to experimental pieces. This year, it has commissioned six artists to each develop a singular, sprawling body of work within the realm of documentary photography.
These series often come from a very personal place.
Kumar’s Bond series, for instance, centres on his brother, who has been working in the Gulf for more than a decade. The photographs document his life with his family in the industrial city complex of Al Ruwais, Abu Dhabi. They show the family during a day out in a park, in a desert and in their apartment. The photographs are intimate, taken by a point-and-shoot camera. They could very well fill the pages of a family album.
But those images tell only one half of the story.
They are juxtaposed with photographs taken in Bengaluru, Kumar’s hometown in southern India. Many are from the construction site of the family’s house, showing rebar wires, foundational excavations and workers carrying building materials. They are taken with the same intimacy as the family photos, also with a point-and-shoot camera. Several of the photographs taken from the construction site are exhibition on cement block platforms, giving the presentation an industrial touch.
“With point-and-shoot photographs, people usually print them small,” says Sara Al Mheiri, who co-curated the exhibition with Osemudiamen Ekore. “We wanted to print them bigger and give them space. All the images are also printed on metal sheets.”
Like with many South Asian workers, Kumar sought employment in the Gulf spurred by the dream of building a house for his parents in their hometown. Sadly, Kumar’s parents died before that dream came to fruition, and they never saw their son’s sacrifice and determination materialise. One of the photographs in Bond evokes this poignancy, showing fruits, flowers and grains laid out over fabrics as part of the memorial ritual for his mother.
“A lot of Sathish’s work is not necessarily linear in the traditional sense of documentary,” Al Mheiri says. “It’s like you’re in a dream haze of capturing his life. That’s what we loved about his work. It was important for us in this exhibition to pick the right stories, but also be mindful of who is telling them and why.”
In Sirti Mara – translated from Arabic to You’re a Woman Now – Saudi artist Latifa Al Bokhari presents a series that explores seminal moments in a woman’s life in the region. One image shows a woman getting ready for a wedding, her hair tied in a spiralling, sequin-speckled bun. Another shows the gloved hand of a woman as she picks jewellery for her granddaughter. A woman flexes her biceps, facing away from the camera, her arms decorated with the floral designs of henna. Another close-up shows a pair of hands dyed red with the powdered leaves.
“We discussed in detail what it means to become a woman, and the memories we had,” Al Mheiri says. “Latifa gathered different women from her community, who all came together to be part of these photographs. You had artists, grandmothers … and you only see small glimpses that, if you are a Khaleeji woman, you will immediately resonate with.”
The photographs are printed on velvet and bordered by a minimal, walnut-coloured frame. One of the images, showing a woman oiling her hair, is presented as the reflection of a vanity table mirror.
“In Arab houses, we like to use velvet in sofas, curtains and so on,” Al Mheiri says. “We were talking about how velvet is usually considered to be a feminine material, so we thought it would be interesting to print on velvet and have these intense moments. Latifa also kept bringing up this memory of going to her mother’s vanity and looking in, so we also wanted to put an image in a vanity itself. Like a portal looking into a woman’s life.”
An experimental approach to documentary photography extends throughout the exhibition. Some artists indirectly capture the essence of their subjects. Beijing-born artist Guanyu Xu, for instance, photographs domestic interiors, overlaying found and personal images on the walls, doors and furniture. The result is a kaleidoscopic representation of a person’s life.
Xu’s photographs are presented in life-size scale, instilling the feeling that one can walk into these rooms or any of the images within. The diversity of textures within each image is also wonderful, contrasting grainy and wrinkled found images with the high resolution of the overall photograph.
In Escaramuza, meanwhile, Brazilian photographer Luisa Dorr focuses on an equestrian team and school in Mexico that trains female horse riders. The photographs show the artistry and physical demands of charreria, the country’s national equestrian sport, as well as the bond that the riders have with their horses.
The portraits of the women, in particular, are moving. The riders pose in serene and powerful stances, dressed in the vibrant garments inspired by Adelitas – the women who fought in the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century.
The last two bodies of work, presented in the dark alcove of the gallery, amplify this revolutionary spirit.
In Endinastawis Anirsa (Lest We Forget), Ethiopian photographer Maheder Haileselassie presents collages of Arbegnoch fighters, who stood against the Italian occupation of Ethiopia between 1936 and 1941.
Haileselassie sourced the photographs from the archival Hamle 16 certificates, a government initiative that distributed land to the resistance fighters. The passport-like photographs are tiled within a light-box, coaxing out the facial features of its subjects from the worn images.
“These are the people who fought back, and they had to have these passport images and these documents to prove that they were part of the war, to get some land back,” Al Mheiri says. “Maheder works with archives in a really beautiful way, in a delicate way.
“This is not an easy topic, and we wanted to pay homage to the people who were part of this [struggle]. All that's left is these documents.”
Individual resistance informs the final series in the exhibition. In Permission to Narrate, Adam Rouhana travelled with a mobile studio across several cities in the occupied West Bank. His subjects included workers, artists, families, children, religious figures and community leaders.
The Palestinian artist asked those who took part in the project to consider how they wanted to be represented. In that sense it was a collaborative process – the photographer’s way of challenging external lenses that often minimised Palestinian identity to a few reductive tropes.
Each image is captioned with the subject’s name, age, city and occupation. Anwar Al-Zugher, 81, is a lorry driver from Hebron. He is photographed in a suit and keffiyeh. Yaqoub Al Atrash, 48, is a contractor also from Hebron. He is photographed with his horse, wearing a cowboy hat. There is nine-year-old Shahnas Abu Zard and 12-year-old Yousef Daqam. Both are from Jenin. One beams in her white dress, the other, wearing a basketball jersey, shows off his biceps.
“I’ve admired Adam’s work for a long time,” Al Mheiri says. “He shows Palestinian people in ways that are not necessarily what you see in the media. I'm really excited to see where this project goes next.”
Vantage Point 13 runs at the Photography Gallery in Al Manakh, Sharjah, until November 29
