Tributes have been paid to David Riley, whose photographs captured a wholly different Abu Dhabi six decades ago.
Mr Riley, a UK citizen, came to Abu Dhabi in 1962 to work for the British Bank of the Middle East.
Along the way he captured striking images of villages, souqs, oases, deserts and the resilient people who lived here at a time just after the discovery of oil and its promise of reshaping the nation.
Mr Riley died on September 23 in the UK aged 85, a family member confirmed. His remarkable collection, which has been donated to the UAE National Library and Archives (NLA), is a vivid record of a place on the cusp of huge transformation.
“I've heard those stories about his years in the Middle East many times,” his son, Pete Riley, told The National. “Those few years stayed with him all his life … and he was very proud of his time over there."
Pete described his father as quiet, contemplative, very intelligent and generous man who also had a keen interest in fishing.
After he returned to the UK in the mid-1960s, Mr Riley's photographic collection sat in a box at the bottom of a wardrobe for many years before being digitised, which renewed interest in the photos, some of which have appeared in The National.
“That old wooden box of slides that I remember in the wardrobe as a child led to a fascinating story that gave him the chance to relive those old times,” his son said.
Mr Riley then donated the collection to the NLA, which has preserved them for future generations. They are available for the public to access on the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive website.
Dr Hazza Al Naqbi, acting director of the archives department at the NLA told The National: “The UAE National Library and Archives is greatly saddened to learn of the passing of David Riley.
“We are extremely grateful to David for his generosity in donating his valuable collection of photographs to the NLA and adding greatly to the history of the UAE. His collection contains a number of rare photographs that will forever be linked with his name at the NLA. On behalf of the whole of the NLA, we would like to offer our condolences to David’s family.”
When Mr Riley moved to Abu Dhabi, the region was still known as the Trucial States with unification of the UAE still several years away.
"It just appealed to me,” he told The National in 2017, of the decision to move to Abu Dhabi. "It was the right time and I hadn't gone to university.”
That early 1960s town seems impossible to comprehend now. It was a place of traditional barasti (date palm branches) dwellings dominated by the Qasr Al Hosn stone fort.
Only a handful of western expatriates lived there and life was more freewheeling. Mr Riley recalled a few shops selling basic items, such as tinned food and rice. Fresh food was flown in daily from Bahrain to an airport that was then just a sandy strip, with oil drums marking the runway.
But the winds of change were in the air. Oil had been found in 1958 and the first shipments had left for international markets the same year he arrived.
The Beach Hotel, Abu Dhabi’s first modern hotel, was about to open and more development was taking place.
One of Mr Riley’s main tasks was to oversee a mobile banking service from the back of a Land Rover for construction workers in Tarif and Jebel Dhanna in the Western Region, as building for the oil industry gathered pace.
Along the way he met UAE Founding Father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, and other dignitaries such as British political agent in Abu Dhabi, Col Sir Hugh Boustead.
But he also spent time taking photographs. For Mr Riley, this was a hobby but he had a remarkable eye. Using a 35-millimetre German Voigtlander, he captured a world that was set to change beyond all recognition.
The collection features shots of Qasr Al Hosn, the old Maqta Causeway that connected Abu Dhabi island to the mainland, flooding on the quay and striking aerial photographs of Abu Dhabi and Dubai Creek, along with the people who lived and worked there.
The shots of Abu Dhabi, for example, show a small town surrounded by vast expanses of sand and blue sea. Images of Dubai Creek show a town that was then just the three neighbourhoods of Bur Dubai, Deira and Al Shindagha centred around the Creek.
“He didn’t think of them as special,” said Pete Riley. “He just thought of them as photos of his time there. The fact the UAE National Archives was interested was something he was immensely proud of.”
Mr Riley left Abu Dhabi in 1964 and moved back to the UK permanently after a brief assignment in Jordan. Survived by his wife, two children, grandchildren and a great grandson, his photographs provide an enduring and crucial record of a decisive moment in modern-day UAE history.
