Pop Photo's 25 Best Places To Photograph

Photo © Carolyn Drake-All Rights Reserved
Popular Photo Magazine has published a feature titled 25 Best Places To Photograph after running a poll amongst various documentary and travel photographers who are drawn to cultures far-removed from ours both geographically and chronologically.

The photographers are, amongst others, Chris Rainier recommending New Guinea, Carolyn Drake recommending Xinjiang, and Andrea Pistolesi recommending Sicily.

Jaipur was recommended as one of the best places to photograph but in my view, that city pales in comparison to a hundred of other more picturesque places in India.

I could have easily straighten that out had I been asked.

And what about Nepal, Bhutan, Bali, Vietnam, Ethiopia....?

Gulf Photo Plus Responds

Mohamed Somji of Dubai's Gulf Photo Plus (GPP) has responded to my criticisms which I raised in my earlier post. Here's his response:

Hi Tewfic,

Thanks for your blog post about our annual event. We had a quick email exchange last year and believe me, I would like nothing more than to have more local/regional Arab and Asian photographers but please understand a couple of things:

(i) The event caters mainly to commercial photography interests: lighting, fashion, photoshop, landscape, etc. - we have always struggled to fill in the documentary workshops.

(ii) The tutors we bring in have international acclaim in their respective genres. I would be very happy to invite Arab/Asian photographers for these particular type of workshops

But, I'm afraid in those genres, I have yet to come across photographers who I would have considered inviting and as someone who teaches workshops, you will appreciate that a good photographer does not necessarily make a good tutor.

I know Munem Wasif well and I had invited him to come to Dubai but I guess he was/is busy with his projects and the same with Farah Nosh so please understand that we are always open to the idea of bringing regional photographers and we do our best to promote local talent. I have reached out many times to Arab photographers to teach/present and we started a Slidefest evening which we aim to repeat again in Feb/March where we promote Dubai based photographers.

We are a young organisation and slowly making a foothold in the photography scene and I'm fully committed to nurturing photography in the region and promoting the work of Asian, Arab and African photographers.

Thanks and look forward to hearing from you.

Mohamed Somji

POV: Gulf Photo Plus (Dubai)

If anyone thought Dubai's financial difficulties would diminish its appetite for hosting international cultural hooplas, they ought to think again. Dates for the annual Gulf Photo Plus (GPP) event have been confirmed as the 1st to the 6th March 2010. This is trumpeted as the region’s only hands-on dedicated photography event.

It will be a week long event packed with over 50 workshops, 90-minute seminars and panels, an exhibition featuring work by the invited photographers, etc. The event will start with an exhibition featuring selected works from the 12 visiting photographers including Joey Lawrence (TTP's Travel Photographer's of 2009), David Nightingale, Robin Nichols, Bobbi Lane, Joe McNally, David Hobby and Zack Arias. Also scheduled is a video SLR workshop presented by Vincent Laforet, and a fashion photography seminar by Melissa Rodwell.

Scanning the list suggests that if you expect to see local, Middle Eastern, or regional names amongst the invited photographers, you'd be badly disappointed. It's sad, isn't it?...but this has always been a symptom in the Gulf, and to a lesser degree in the rest of the Middle East. Some would call it the pathetic legacy of colonialism, and a habit of cultural dependency.

Here are questions the organizers may want to think of. Why aren't the talented and courageous Palestinian photographers, who risk their lives to document the daily horrors of Gaza, also invited? Why doesn't GPP also invite some of the immensely talented Bangladeshi documentary photographers who document the impact of poverty and floods on their homeland? Why don't you invite the Kashmiri photographers...why don't you also invite the emerging Afghan photographers...the incredibly prolific Indian photographers? The Malaysians...the Iranians?

What's the point in promoting the work of well-established Western photographers who already get more than their share of exposure in Europe and the United States? Aren't the local, Mid Eastern and regional photographers also entitled to get their work exposed in Dubai? Why don't you use Dubai as a hub to expose native and regional talent to the world? Dare to break the cycle of this addictive dependency on Western talent and promote your own...and that of your region. Yes, perhaps GPP won't attract as many Western sponsors at first, but it will attract the best non-Western photographers...and the sponsors will return soon enough. This is the future...leave the past where it belongs.

By the way, I have the feeling that GPP's organizers haven't caught up with the news that the old boys club has crumbled. And by the way #2, TTP's vented in a previous post about the same issue here.

I know, I know, I digressed...so let me get back to the event. Details have yet to be posted on Gulf Photo Plus's website, but can be seen here.