Yamam Nabeel: Intersecting Realities

June 1 - 30 2022 @ ICD Brookfield Place, Dubai

On display in Dubai after its London Sojourn, Yamam Nabeel's Intersecting Realities encompasses film, digital & verbal portraiture across two years and three cities: London, Berlin and Dubai. Nabeel documents the changing attitudes and perceptions of our post-pandemic world with warmth & alacrity, and the unique personalities and cultures of his subjects are caught stirringly for display.

This project began in London in the spring of 2020, borne out of Yamam Nabeel’s desire to address the ambient uncertainty and conflicting perceptions that characterized the year. The changing laws and guidelines over this period channelled the project into a clear format: photographing a growing web of friends and friends of friends outside their homes, reviewing their experiences with them while sitting someplace of their choosing. The formality of this process and of taking a film photograph - these photos were taken with antique Hasselblad and Mamiya 7 film cameras- nonetheless result in warm and intimate portraits, a character that Nabeel attributes to the strangeness of the moment and his technique of looking directly at the sitter instead of through the viewfinder while taking a shot. 

 

This process has worked across borders and cultures. Eventually, the project expanded into a visit to Berlin on the cusp of its longest lockdown. Nabeel’s subjects were still reeling from the past spring while the future loomed, and time for reflection felt scarce. The technical considerations of film photography turn every picture into a deliberate effort, and Nabeel notes that the effort allows photographer and subject alike to truly be present at that moment. By turning them into celluloid objects, as well, these interviews become tangible and take on a certain physical gravity--infinitely scalable, a well-taken film photograph does not reflect reality crudely in pixels but creates a new pocket of its own. In this way, Nabeel uses the film as a corrective to the intangible and omnipresent everyday of digital photography the same way he uses one-to-one human connection to find peace in a disordered society. 

 This past February, Nabeel wrapped the project with a visit to a Dubai on the eve of relaxing its restrictions. The color film and sunnier sentiments from the sitters act both as an epilogue and an investigation into the cultural responses the international community has had to our changing lives. The value of taking time to connect with others remains consistent throughout, however, the unpredictability of the future matched by the surprising commonalities and distances between people’s experiences. Indeed, the sixty-odd stories people have contributed to this project read similarly all the way through, and in presenting 29 of them together here the intersections and rifts between our collective realities come into view.

In His Words: “What began as a study of perception versus reality in a time of a global pandemic has turned into a collection of intersecting stories of (extra)ordinary people living a shared reality – a reality no one predicted. As, we were learning to adapt to live with Covid-19 and it’s variants, I had the opportunity, almost like an epilogue, to photograph and interview residents of Dubai. Thus the project, now known as Intersecting Realities is completed. This is the work of almost two years, telling the stories of these people and sharing their individual experiences of these extraordinary times.”

 Visitor Information

ICD Brookfield, 312 Al Mustaqbal St - Trade Center - DIFC - Dubai

  • Open 24 Hours

  • Entry is free, no booking required

  • Wheelchair accessible

View exhibition artworks below.