Although the early 1990s are not exactly in the distant past, in technological terms it was a different age.
When the Australian photographer Max Pam travelled to Yemen in 1993, he was not privy to the immediacy of digital cameras. Instead he visited with only a bag of 60 black-and-white film rolls and a medium-format camera. In a similar way to the Sufi mystics that he read about before his trip, he explored the country during a “hot, spare and beautiful Ramadan” in May of that year.
The photos, which Pam developed back home, are printed on silver gelatin paper and upon them or around them, he has written his thoughts in journal-like entries.
This photographic diary, Ramadan in Yemen, was published in 2011 by Éditions Bessard in a limited-edition, 92-page book and the images are making their Middle East debut in East Wing gallery in Dubai this summer.
“I have been waiting for the right time to exhibit this work,” says Elie Domit, the gallery’s founder. “And what better time than Ramadan?”
Pam cannot make it to the official opening on July 15, but all visitors need to do is read a few of the handwritten notes alongside the photographs and they will be immediately immersed in his experience.
Take his panoramic image of Wadi Hadramaut, for example, which features two images set side by side and displayed beside words explaining the view, thus transporting you to the place: “A 200-riyal taxi ride takes us 30km up into the 200m-high wadi. I see forests of palms, fields of parsley and there is a heady smell of onions. The warm air is flowing through me all the way. For 18 years I’ve been longing to come to this place and for the past two days I know exactly why.”
Next to this is an almost cinematic shot of three men on their mopeds riding through the jungle. Another depicts children running through the alleyways of old Sanaa, dramatic with the show-stopping architecture.
Weapons play a common role in the images. Youngsters in kanduras stroll along with their daggers, or janbiya, hanging from their belts; in another, an old man poses with a pistol, next to which Pam has written: “In Yemen, no matter if you are rich or poor, you must have a gun.”
Although women feature less prominently, there are a couple of photographs that reveal aspects of their lives. My favourite is of a bus ride from the highland city of Taizz. An older woman in a headscarf sits in the centre of the shot, staring right at the camera. While she clearly questions Pam’s presence in the vehicle – a strange western man sitting in a full-to-bursting minibus on a dusty road – we are invited to enter her world and question what life must be like in Yemen.
In the exhibition statement printed on the wall, Pam says his photographs do the country “justice”, and further describes his experience. “People always wanted me to share and be part of their Ramadan, their community, their Yemen,” he writes. “I travelled all over the country with them. To Shibam, Taizz, Al Mukallah, Sanaa, over the desert, by the sea and into the mountains. [These images] give my version of that unforgettable Ramadan month. An experience freely given to me by the generosity of Yemeni people.”
• Ramadan in Yemen runs from July 15 until September 10 at East Wing, Limestone House, DIFC, Dubai. Call 050 553 3879 for more information
aseaman@thenational.ae
