Capturing joy, culture and change
Ahead of her session at GPP Photo Week, Saudi-American photographer Tasneem Al Sultan tells Anand Raj OK why she enjoys photographing weddings, especially Indian ones
She has photographed more than 120 weddings in 20 countries. Her docu-dramatic photographs of Saudi weddings have been featured in National Geographic while her pictures capturing momentous changes in Saudi Arabia – the historic elections, the nation’s plan to move beyond oil – have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
A postgraduate in social linguistics and anthropology, and a grantee of the muchrespected Magnum Foundation, Tasneem Al Sultan says she chose to pick up the camera – albeit after a stint teaching the English language in the US and Saudi Arabia – because ‘photography is really story-telling. It has the same rules, I guess, as social linguistics and anthropology but uses a different kind of medium and gets a larger audience.’
Born and schooled in the US, Tasneem moved to Saudi Arabia to pursue her undergraduate degree and says that her time in university in Jeddah played a role in shaping her thinking and perspective with regard to photography. ‘I always try to mediate between Western and Eastern environments, and I try to explain both of these [worlds],’ says the Saudi American, in an exclusive interview to Friday.
Taking up photography as a hobby some eight years ago, Tasneem developed her passion capturing weddings in the kingdom. Keen to move away from the posed-shots-infront-of-a-backdrop type of marriage pictures
common at the time, she chose to shoot documentary-style, using available light and capturing little gestures like hands touching, coy glimpses, the bride enjoying a joke or kids having fun at the wedding.
Named by the British Journal of Photography as one of 16 emerging photographers to watch, Tasneem does not believe in preparing extensively before beginning a wedding shoot. Instead, she prefers bonding with the bride while the latter is getting her make-up or hair done – sessions that can take a while. ‘I don’t go prepared for the story. It’s while I’m with [the bride] in her room and she’s getting her make-up done that I ask her about her story, and shoot everything I see,’ says the awardwinning photographer, whose works have been exhibited from Paris to London and Florence to Mumbai.
‘None of the pictures I take is staged. No one looks at the camera. Because I don’t use backdrops I have to evoke emotions, have to find the continuity that is not usually obvious to a person who has not been to a Gulf wedding.’
Although she has recorded weddings in over 20 countries, Tasneem admits she has a soft corner for Indian marriages.
‘I love Indian weddings. Photographing a wedding in India is quite like a visual feast,’ she says, adding that it’s a tad different shooting in Europe where spectacular backgrounds and lush nature vie for attention, or in the Gulf region where ‘you are restricted because it is segregated weddings.
‘I love the joy [of Indian weddings]. I love that there are cultural aspects that I can relate to as a person from the Middle East because there are so many similarities.’
Having photographed several Hindu and Sikh weddings, she says, ‘They may not be similar socially but there are aspects that are similar to Muslim and Christian weddings.
‘I love to connect the dots and find out how the couple may have met and tell a story of how the mundane became the beginning of their lifetime, so to speak.’
Tasneem is working on a long-term project called Saudi Tales of Love, an offshoot of sorts of her wedding shoot assignments. ‘I wanted to explore the reality of ever after,’ she says. ‘I want to explore what happens after you’re married, or if you are divorced or widowed, or are struggling through your marriage. [The project] is based on Saudi women but it’s pretty much the same [across the world].’
The visual journalist is also part of Rawiya, a Middle Eastern photography collective that aims to ‘push both East and West to think about their own stereotypes’. Using photography as a medium, the collective, with six photographers, hopes to redress the way the world looks at the Middle East.
Stationed in Palestine, Yemen, Tunisia, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, the six photographers work on long-term projects capturing the life of the people and reflecting ground realities. Unlike so-called ‘parachute photographers’ – who drop in, stay for a short while, shoot and leave – the Rawiya collective photographers, says Tasneem, remain in a place for an extended period of time documenting the true essence of the place.
The 33-year-old photographer is also working on a project documenting young people in Saudi Arabia and how they are using social media. ‘I’m photographing a lot of young Saudi internet-driven people,’ says the finalist of the 2017 Sony World Photography Awards. ‘I find it very interesting. It’s a nice feeling to see that the youth are really smart. They are doing amazing things.’ Passionate about the medium, Tasneem’s dream is to be ‘remembered for bringing dignity and pride to the people that I photograph; to give their stories much more respect than what’s typically portrayed about the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia.’