Dubai & Abu Dhabi

Last year I was asked by the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography in Greece to participate in their Middle Eastern Project titled “Oriented and Disoriented in the Middle East.” I was invited to join a team of art photographers who were to visit different Middle Eastern Countries. I was chosen to travel to Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The “photographic missions” had to take place in the month of September, a time of the year especially challenging for photographers as temperatures in this part of the world reach extremes.

I was seeking AN “alternative,” way of expressing myself for this particular project. I didn’t have a lot of time to spend in these countries (where I have never been before), and the idea of visiting with an iPhone instead of my standard cameras (SLRS&4X5) became more compelling by the day.

I finally suggested my idea to the museum director (by then already a decision), who initially found it a very bad one. But when I showed him my Hipstamatic portfolio, he changed his mind and gave the go ahead.

Shooting with my iPhone and Hipstamatic proved to be a brilliant way of capturing shots. I decided to use a couple of film and lens combinations for each country, those that would capture the color and feeling in the best possible way. Of course I played around with other combinations all the time, but it was very interesting to experiment and eventually settle with combinations that worked better for each location.