Gezirah
May 12, 2009
Badr al Nomani speaks about the Emirates Photo Competition
January 12, 2009
The work of Wilfred Thesiger, from Africa“It takes far longer than the fraction of a second in which you click the shutter to actually make a photo,” says the Omani photographer Bader al Nomani, 38. He is speaking in his capacity as the director of the annual Emirates Photo Competition (EPC), which he helped establish at the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) in 2004-05 and has since contributed to shaping. The present, fourth round of the event has only just been announced when we meet – submissions will be received until the end of December – but Nomani is eager to stress the multifaceted nature of the event as something over and above a competition per se. As he puts it, EPC is “a month-long festival of photography based at the Cultural Foundation”, to be held, starting on the day the winning entries are announced, from March 10 to April 10 .
Nomani stresses the multifaceted aspect not only of the event but also of the art of photography, which involves far more than effective technique, he says. “In my case,” he goes on, “when I used to print my own work, for example, it could take up to a whole day for a single image to materialise to my satisfaction – and even then, considering the relative limitations of the manual way of work which, dinosaur-like, I held onto for as long as I could and would still hold onto now given half a chance, in practice the resulting image could only be so big most of the time. Of course, a lot of the time a photograph should only be seen as part of a sequence or photo story, but even by itself it has to be selected from among many similar pictures, which is why photo editing is an integral part of the profession. Such things may seem obvious but they are not half as well known in the Arab world as they should be, believe it or not. And this,” he declares, “is why I think the international EPC is an important event: as a festival it does far more than arbitrate among competing images to spread the word about photography and what it really is – from Abu Dhabi (and now the whole world) to the Arab world. Through lectures, workshops, exhibitions and support, we try to bring awareness of photography to people, to society, and to encourage Arab photographers to abide by the rigours of the profession, to roam around the world and to embrace the hard as well as the easy sides of their vocation.”
Nomani, who started out as a painter but eventually gave it up, feeling that “photography is far closer to people,” believes strongly in the potential of photographs to inform, enlighten and emphasise what is shared by human beings all over the world. In this sense, for him, the fourth EPC is the first true round of the event since, for the first time this year – in the attempt to gain ground as “one of the region’s best respected photo events” – it is open to amateur and professional photographers as well as students from all over the world (the first two rounds were restricted to UAE nationals and the third to participants from the GCC). Every form of photographic image is accepted, from black-and-white negatives to Photoshop-enhanced JPEGs, provided that property laws are observed together with an understanding of what is generally believed to constitute photography – no holds barred – and that the images are converted into high-resolution digital format and stored on CDs or DVDs. “Photo credits, copyright,” Nomani snaps: “sadly they remain a major issue in the Arab print media; that’s why it is one of the things we hope to raise awareness of and help build in the region.” Photographers can submit a total of ten images or three sequences of six images each.
In its global reincarnation the competition retains its formal structure of one main theme (commanding the Diamond Eye Award, worth Dhs 40,000, of publishing a book and holding an exhibition of the winner’s work) and four additional categories (each including a Gold, Silver and Bronze Award of Dhs 15,000, Dhs 12,000 and Dhs 10,000, respectively). In addition each of six jury members will give a Dhs 10,000 award; there is also a UAE photographers award and a series of certificates of appreciation.
This year, to celebrate the great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), the founder of photojouralism famous for his innovative use of the Leica and the concept of the decisive moment, the main theme is street photography, while the four categories include landscape and nature, portrait and people, journalism photography, and sports and action. A sizable selection of Cartier-Bresson’s original work will be exhibited under the title Building Formation, “a very significant part of the event,” according to Nomani, while an exhibition of the work of the heading of the jury, the National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry, will also be held for the event’s month-long duration. Best known for his portrait of the little girl in Afghanistan whom he went back to photograph as a grown woman living under the Taliban, McCurry will also be giving a five-day workshop on the art of photography and providing a selection of prints for an exhibition of his portraits. Other exhibitions include work from the Dhafra Camel Beauty Contest and a selection of the submissions. “As you can see,” Nomani remarks, “the idea is to inject as much photographic energy into the scene as we can possibly muster. Unlike at the Al Thani Photo Competition in Qatar, for example,” he explains, “financial value is not in itself emphasised – just photography.”
The jury, which is still in the process of being drawn up, will comprise an as yet unnamed member of the board of the Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique (FIAP), in which EPC gained membership this year, as well as the Emirati photographer Said al Shamsi, an internationally recognised juror, together with Abdurrahman al Hanai from Oman, Hussein al Jabir from Qatar and a photographer to be named from Saudi Arabia. That four out of six jurors should be from the Gulf is only natural, says Nomani, “since the EPC is a regionally oriented competition” that has yet to establish itself on the international scene. “I don’t personally recognise national frontiers as far as photography is concerned,” he says, “but it remains true that we need as much presence from the region as possible to help spread the message, as I was saying earlier – not that their affiliation with the Gulf will have any bearing on the way they see the pictures.”
For Nomani – that is why – photography, to an even greater extent than painting, is an international language, a language that speaks directly to the human predicament wherever and in whatever circumstance it happens to be located. If anything, what distinguishes Arab photographers, for Nomani, is their laziness. “A place like the UAE, let’s be honest, gives photographers exceptional opportunities by any standards – but do they really use them? And how much?” The problem, he says, may have its origins in the Islamic prohibition on figurative art, but it manifests itself in society’s lack of understanding of photography not only as an art form but as a language, as a means of communication. Today Muslim authorities in no way prohibit photography, but people, society and the media, especially the media, do not give the profession – or art in general – the respect they deserve. The idea behind the EPC is that we will come to a point when an aspiring photographer who has captured one eloquent image that could win him a prize will understand that there is far more to success than having clicked at the right moment. There is the theoretical and practical discipline, trial and error, and the passion that drives photographers to travel and endure all kinds of difficulties in order to tell their visual stories – less to capture a moment,” Nomani says, “than to speak articulately and beautifully about being human.”
Nomani stresses the multifaceted aspect not only of the event but also of the art of photography, which involves far more than effective technique, he says. “In my case,” he goes on, “when I used to print my own work, for example, it could take up to a whole day for a single image to materialise to my satisfaction – and even then, considering the relative limitations of the manual way of work which, dinosaur-like, I held onto for as long as I could and would still hold onto now given half a chance, in practice the resulting image could only be so big most of the time. Of course, a lot of the time a photograph should only be seen as part of a sequence or photo story, but even by itself it has to be selected from among many similar pictures, which is why photo editing is an integral part of the profession. Such things may seem obvious but they are not half as well known in the Arab world as they should be, believe it or not. And this,” he declares, “is why I think the international EPC is an important event: as a festival it does far more than arbitrate among competing images to spread the word about photography and what it really is – from Abu Dhabi (and now the whole world) to the Arab world. Through lectures, workshops, exhibitions and support, we try to bring awareness of photography to people, to society, and to encourage Arab photographers to abide by the rigours of the profession, to roam around the world and to embrace the hard as well as the easy sides of their vocation.”
Nomani, who started out as a painter but eventually gave it up, feeling that “photography is far closer to people,” believes strongly in the potential of photographs to inform, enlighten and emphasise what is shared by human beings all over the world. In this sense, for him, the fourth EPC is the first true round of the event since, for the first time this year – in the attempt to gain ground as “one of the region’s best respected photo events” – it is open to amateur and professional photographers as well as students from all over the world (the first two rounds were restricted to UAE nationals and the third to participants from the GCC). Every form of photographic image is accepted, from black-and-white negatives to Photoshop-enhanced JPEGs, provided that property laws are observed together with an understanding of what is generally believed to constitute photography – no holds barred – and that the images are converted into high-resolution digital format and stored on CDs or DVDs. “Photo credits, copyright,” Nomani snaps: “sadly they remain a major issue in the Arab print media; that’s why it is one of the things we hope to raise awareness of and help build in the region.” Photographers can submit a total of ten images or three sequences of six images each.
In its global reincarnation the competition retains its formal structure of one main theme (commanding the Diamond Eye Award, worth Dhs 40,000, of publishing a book and holding an exhibition of the winner’s work) and four additional categories (each including a Gold, Silver and Bronze Award of Dhs 15,000, Dhs 12,000 and Dhs 10,000, respectively). In addition each of six jury members will give a Dhs 10,000 award; there is also a UAE photographers award and a series of certificates of appreciation.
This year, to celebrate the great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), the founder of photojouralism famous for his innovative use of the Leica and the concept of the decisive moment, the main theme is street photography, while the four categories include landscape and nature, portrait and people, journalism photography, and sports and action. A sizable selection of Cartier-Bresson’s original work will be exhibited under the title Building Formation, “a very significant part of the event,” according to Nomani, while an exhibition of the work of the heading of the jury, the National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry, will also be held for the event’s month-long duration. Best known for his portrait of the little girl in Afghanistan whom he went back to photograph as a grown woman living under the Taliban, McCurry will also be giving a five-day workshop on the art of photography and providing a selection of prints for an exhibition of his portraits. Other exhibitions include work from the Dhafra Camel Beauty Contest and a selection of the submissions. “As you can see,” Nomani remarks, “the idea is to inject as much photographic energy into the scene as we can possibly muster. Unlike at the Al Thani Photo Competition in Qatar, for example,” he explains, “financial value is not in itself emphasised – just photography.”
The jury, which is still in the process of being drawn up, will comprise an as yet unnamed member of the board of the Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique (FIAP), in which EPC gained membership this year, as well as the Emirati photographer Said al Shamsi, an internationally recognised juror, together with Abdurrahman al Hanai from Oman, Hussein al Jabir from Qatar and a photographer to be named from Saudi Arabia. That four out of six jurors should be from the Gulf is only natural, says Nomani, “since the EPC is a regionally oriented competition” that has yet to establish itself on the international scene. “I don’t personally recognise national frontiers as far as photography is concerned,” he says, “but it remains true that we need as much presence from the region as possible to help spread the message, as I was saying earlier – not that their affiliation with the Gulf will have any bearing on the way they see the pictures.”
For Nomani – that is why – photography, to an even greater extent than painting, is an international language, a language that speaks directly to the human predicament wherever and in whatever circumstance it happens to be located. If anything, what distinguishes Arab photographers, for Nomani, is their laziness. “A place like the UAE, let’s be honest, gives photographers exceptional opportunities by any standards – but do they really use them? And how much?” The problem, he says, may have its origins in the Islamic prohibition on figurative art, but it manifests itself in society’s lack of understanding of photography not only as an art form but as a language, as a means of communication. Today Muslim authorities in no way prohibit photography, but people, society and the media, especially the media, do not give the profession – or art in general – the respect they deserve. The idea behind the EPC is that we will come to a point when an aspiring photographer who has captured one eloquent image that could win him a prize will understand that there is far more to success than having clicked at the right moment. There is the theoretical and practical discipline, trial and error, and the passion that drives photographers to travel and endure all kinds of difficulties in order to tell their visual stories – less to capture a moment,” Nomani says, “than to speak articulately and beautifully about being human.”
