SEVEN MAGNIFICENT NAMES PUTTING THE CRUELTIES OF WAR AND NATURE IN FRAME
▶ As Xposure photography festival returns to Sharjah, Razmig Bedirian offers a snapshot of the event’s highlights
This year’s Xposure International Photography Festival is its largest and most diverse. The event, which began yesterday and runs until Tuesday, is back at the Expo Centre Sharjah. However, this time, it is spread over about 3.3 hectares.
The festival has been steadily growing since the first in 2016, bringing in established and emerging photographers, expanding its workshop offerings and boosting its award section. There are 400 photographers from around the world showcasing their work across 90 solo and group exhibitions.
Here are some of the names to look out for.
Afshin Ismaeli
The Kurdish-Norwegian war photographer provides an empathetic window into some of the most tumultuous events in recent history.
He has covered humanitarian issues and conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, where he photographed the fall of Kabul and the Taliban takeover.
His work has won several awards, including the Journalism and Media International Centre’s Picture of the Year in 2021. Ismaeli is presenting some of his recent pieces at a solo exhibition, which is titled Shadows and Resilience: Life Under the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Thandiwe Muriu
In her arresting, vibrant portraits, it is clear that the Kenyan photographer draws from her experiences in advertising. Muriu has collaborated with companies including Apple, Dior and Lavazza as part of her profession, and her work has been published by CNN, BBC and Vogue.
Muriu is self-taught and she honed her unique take on portraiture as a result.
The artist presented her first major solo show in Paris last year. Her exhibition at Xposure is titled Camo and features works of subjects wearing camouflage-style clothes that blend seamlessly with the backdrop, an aesthetic she has developed reflecting on African traditions and pop culture.
Nicole Tung
The Hong Kong photographer has covered some of the most pressing humanitarian issues of our time. She has highlighted the experiences of Native
American war veterans, the Rohingya genocide and child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Tung has documented the refugee crisis in Europe, the ripples of the ISIS onslaught in Iraq and Syria, as well as abuse against women in Turkey.
She was present during the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and, in 2022, provided photographic insights into the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She says her experiences have made her acutely aware of the threats photojournalists face while trying to document tumultuous events and conflict zones.
In 2015, Tung was part of the board of the Frontline Freelance Register, an initiative
dedicated to freelance journalists who face dangers in their work, and continues to raise awareness about the necessity of protecting reporters around the globe. Her exhibition at Xposure is titled As Strong as the War, As Soft as the Peace.
Rick Smolan
The American photographer has worked for several leading magazine publications, including Time, Life and National Geographic. Yet, even with his stellar credentials, Smolan is perhaps best known for co-authoring the book series
A Day in the Life.
It provides a platform for photographers to showcase pictures of different parts of
the world across a 24-hour cycle. The books, which began publishing in the early 1980s, provide insight into different parts of the world, such as Japan, Australia, China and the former Soviet Union.
Smolan is also the chief executive of Against All Odds Productions, a company that helps journalists around the world realise crowd-sourced projects. He will also be discussing the initiative during a talk at the festival, highlighting the intersection between storytelling and technology.
Edouard Elias
After living in Egypt for a decade, Elias travelled back to France in 2009 to study business. Soon, however, he decided to pursue photography instead. Less than three years later, he was covering the conflict in Syria, photographing from the front lines of the war between rebel fighters and the army of Bashar Al Assad.
In June 2013, Elias was captured by ISIS fighters and spent 11 months in captivity. Instead of dissuading him from photojournalism, Elias says he was motivated further to highlight stories from international conflicts.
In 2014, shortly after he was released, he travelled to the Central African Republic to document the civil war.
At Xposure, Elias is presenting Well 77. The photography series follows firefighters working for Naft Shamal, an oil company in Iraq, as they face the hazards of containing and extinguishing blazes that erupt from oil wells.
Elias photographed a weekslong fight between firefighters and the flames at Well 77 in 2017, in the margins of the dwindling war against ISIS.
Angela and Jonathan Scott
The Scotts are among the world’s most distinguished nature photographers. They are the only couple to have each won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition.
Over the past three decades, the couple have travelled across all seven continents photographing and leading workshops. They founded the Sacred Nature Initiative in 2021, a non-profit, to raise awareness about the natural environment and the necessity of protecting it. Under the initiative, the couple released the books Sacred Nature: Life’s Eternal Dance and Sacred Nature 2: Reconnecting People to Our Planet.
Their exhibition at Xposure, Mara-Serengeti: A Big Cat Paradise, ties into the first volume and focuses on the ecosystem of Tanzania’s protected area.