The new Photography Gallery opens with two exhibitions

Confirming its vitality and willingness to increasingly present itself as a hub for visual art, strategically located close to the edge separating the north and south of the world, the Sharjah Foundation inaugurated on 8 November two photography exhibitions, one historical and the other contemporary, in the new space dedicated to this artistic practice: the Photography Gallery in Al Manakh, Sharjah City.

Busra (sic) creek’, late 19th to early 20th century. Collection of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi

The permanent exhibition 'Photographic Encounters along the Gulf Coasts' features 165 photographs and archival documents from the collection of His Highness the Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Ruler of Sharjah, mostly glass slides dating from the late 19th century to the early decades of the 20th century, depicting places (the Emirates, Muscat, Aden and others) and commercial activities (mainly fishermen and craftsmen) along the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean coasts.

‘Arab dhow’, late 19th to early 20th century. Collection of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi

The exhibition is presented as a collection of artefacts whose authors are in reality as uncertain as the dates and often even the exact place where the image was taken, objects passed from hand to hand with titles and inscriptions contributed by the different owners, becoming themselves the bearers of stories and memories. This is precisely the characteristic feature of the collection, the attempt to recompose through historical photographs the narrative of the Persian Gulf region, exploring colonial and post-colonial patterns of knowledge production and dissemination.

‘Native roundabout’, late 19th to early 20th century. Collection of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi

This exhibition - an enlightened example of how necessary it is to investigate the past in order to understand and translate the present, an exercise delegated to photography, which in this case transcends its primary significance as a document - is flanked by the exhibition "Image Keepers" until 26 April, featuring more than 50 photographic works in various formats from the Sharjah Art Foundation's collections, from studio portraits to multimedia installations produced by 17 artists and collectives. Inspired by the 2010 work entitled "Gardiennes d'images" - created by Zineb Sedira, an artist whose work celebrates the role of women as custodians of personal and cultural memory - "Image Keepers" explores the socio-political fabric of the past sixty years against the backdrop of the tight and often fractured processes of modernisation and decolonisation in North African and Middle Eastern countries, and even touches on Central Africa and South Asia.

‘Arab dhows’, late 19th to early 20th century. Collection of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi

The works speak of issues related to ethnic identity, transnational migration and diasporas, the relationships between individuals and places, personal and collective memory, the rediscovery of the original self and, inevitably, the processes of modernisation that still disrupt the daily life of small and large communities.