Sheikh Saoud Al Thani Project Award 2022
For the second year of jurying this annual grant award in 2022, the jury was Sueraya Shaheen (photographer and editor); and Kristine Khouri (independent researcher) and Sheikha Shaikha Al-Thani (Qatar Photographic Society), along with Tasweer’s Artistic Director Charlotte Cotton, Director Khalifa Ahmad Al Obaidly and Senior Curator Maryam Hassan Al-Thani. They reviewed applicants’ proposals and held meetings in January 2022 before selecting the awardees.
Fatema bint Ahmad Al Doh
Qatari documentary photographer Fatema bint Ahmad Al-Doh focuses upon vanishing cultures, remote tribes, minority and indigenous people. Her first photographic project was about a Rashidi tribe that migrated from the Arabian Peninsula to Sudan. She is currently working on a project about the Kalash people who are one of the smallest ethnic minorities of Pakistan and was awarded with the Sheikh Saoud Al Thani Project Award grant in 2022 in support of her continued development of this project. Using embedded approaches of traveling and living with the people she studies and documents, her photographs tend to capture the environments in natural light, with constant human presence in the work.
“ Fatema bint Ahmad’s Al-Doh’s photographic essay invites us into the rituals and environments of the Kalashi community in Pakistan. Her photographs are compassionate and beautiful – mesmerizing and articulate – and quite incredible in the way that they draw us into close encounters with a secret place and ancient tribe. ”– Charlotte Cotton
Fethi Sahraoui
Born in 1993, in the town of Hassi R'Mel in Southern Algeria, Fethi Sahraoui creates photographic narratives that centre on social landscapes. After studying foreign languages at university in Mascara, he graduated in 2018, with his final research project focused on then contribution made by Black American photographers during The Civil Rights Movement from the mid. 1950s and through the 1960s. Sahraoui’s work has been shown in cultural institutions including The Arab World Institute in Paris, and his photographs have been published on numerous platforms, including The New York Times, among others. He is a member of the 220Collective, a Magnum Foundation Fellow, and a participant in The Joop Swart Masterclass by World Press Photo.
“ Fethi Sahraoui is a visual poet and a unique storyteller. The Wind that Shakes Dreams is an extraordinary evocation of an almost dream-like place and situation through which Fethi guides us, where its inhabitants patiently wait while we pass by. I’m reminded of the American writer Truman Capote’s quest for achieving what he called a “non-fiction novel” – the evocative holding of objectively observed and subjectively felt realities within one creative form. ”– Charlotte Cotton
Reem Falaknaz
Reem Falaknaz is a photographer whose work in the UAE and Oman documents social and physical landscapes. In 2014, she took part in the Magnum Foundation’s Arab Documentary Photography Program, supported by the Arab Fund for Art and Culture and the Prince Claus Fund. Falaknaz’s capacity to create evocative installations of her photographic work is manifest in her art commissions, including her contributions at the UAE's National Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale; the 2020 Lahore Biennale; and Expo 2020 in Florence, Italy. She was awarded a 2022 Sheikh Saoud Al Thani Project Award grant for her ongoing project that centres on the rituals and performances of music in the region, and the bringing together of private and public emotions, values and ideas.
“ Reem Falaknaz’s project beautifully sheds light on the private lives and rituals of individuals in the Gulf. Her sensitivity and commitment in the proposed project exploring the live music and dances serve simultaneously as a soundtrack and performance during pivotal life events. Her future development of this project will certainly add a new perspective in documenting the cultural practices and rituals of music and dance. ”– Kristine Khouri
Salih Basheer
Salih Basheer originates from Omdurman in Sudan. He has lived in Cairo since 2013 and received his Bachelor of Science degree in Geography from Cairo University. Basheer's passion for photography began when he moved to Cairo and has been integral in helping him rediscover himself and his heritage. He credits the medium of photography as giving him a visual language to fully express himself, alongside of the vital role in his journey as a photographer that living between Khartoum and Cairo has inspired. Basheer photographed the 2021 coup and revolution in Sudan for platforms including AP, Al Jazeera, and Sputnik, and received his Diploma in Photojournalism at DMJX [Danish school of media and journalism] in Copenhagen in the same year.
“ I am incredibly moved by the depth and artistic ambition of Salih Basheer’s 22 Days In Between project that visually and conceptually calls forth, reconfigures and heals his personal trauma. His photographic project explores how loss and absence are defining forces in how we shape our sense of self and the narratives we create to comprehend our experiences in life. ”– Charlotte Cotton
Abdo Shanan
Abdo Shanan was born in 1982 in Oran, Algeria to a Sudanese father and an Algerian mother. He studied Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Sirte in Libya and subsequently undertook an internship at the Magnum photography agency in Paris. In 2015, he co-founded the 220Collective – a peer-led organization for Algerian photographers. He won The CAP Prize (Contemporary African Photography) in 2019 for his project entitled Dry and, in the same year, he was selected for The Joop Swart Masterclass by World Press Photo. In 2020, he was the recipient of Premi Mediterrani Albert Camus Incipiens and co-curated an exhibition, Narratives from Algeria at Photoforum Pasquar in Switzerland. Shanan was a recipient of the Sheikh Saoud Al Thani Project award in 2022 for the further development of his A Little Louder project and publication, which intensely maps the experiences of Algerians who participated in the ‘Hirak’ protests since February 2019.
“ The work of Abdo Shanan is a deeply intimate approach to visualizing the melding of social and individual identity within the context of public protests. A Little Louder captures the 'Hirak' demonstrations which started in February 2019 in Algeria. I am struck by how personal the images feel and interested to see how Abdo extends this project in the time after Covid-19 lockdowns and asks how a society in protest is changed and continues to resist. ”– Shk. Maryam Hassan Al-Thani