Niyū Yūrk is structured somewhat chronologically but also tries to group work into loose themes, using only material from the library’s Middle Eastern collections. Using photography as well as film, sound and print media, Abid says she “wanted it to be a proud celebration of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) cultures, of their contributions in different fields, from businesses that serve daily lives of New Yorkers, to the earliest music recordings in New York City.” She references artists such as Iranian-American theatre director Reza Abdoh, “and these are things that you probably don’t expect when you go see an exhibition like this. You probably expect it to be these timelines of immigration to New York. But I wanted to show the breadth of all these contributions and in areas where you probably didn’t expect MENA people to be at the forefront of theatre or electro-acoustic music.”

This celebratory tone is carried throughout the show to the photographic series by Mahka Eslami, Bodega Boys, highlighting moments of daily life and joy in Yemeni corner stores around New York City. Elsewhere in the exhibition, there are clips from In My Own Skin, which documents the aftermath of 9/11 as experienced by five young Arab women living in New York.

When Abid began her role in 2022, she was asked to identify the library’s earliest Arabic diasporic materials from New York City, items that have been collected since the founding of the Oriental Division in 1897. The institution’s initial request for the exhibition – to focus on early 20th-century immigration – felt too narrow for Abid. “I considered that wouldn’t be inclusive of the more diverse waves that came later after Christian Syrian immigration,” she explains. “I really wanted to tell that story, especially at this moment now when there is a need to be seen, to be represented in these institutions.” Her insistence expanded the exhibition all the way to the present day. 

The process also raised questions about institutional responsibility. The library, Abid says, has taken seriously the matter of who shapes these histories. “We’re a public library and the library had to fight and advocate to have a Middle Eastern curator,” she says. “It was a priority… to have someone from a Middle Eastern background to tell these stories.” That work includes addressing inaccuracies inherited from earlier cataloguing. Images by immigrant-era photographers like Lewis Hine and Augustus Sherman often arrived with limited information. “These photographs… were collected as they were described by these photographers,” Abid explains. “But today we’re in 2025. We have curators with subject expertise. We also hear from the public.”

One example is a portrait long labelled “Armenian Jew,” corrected only after the man’s descendants contacted a museum exhibiting the photograph. “They said this is our great-grandfather and he’s a Yemeni Jewish rabbi from Jerusalem,” Abid says, and the record was later updated. “That’s very important,” she adds, “because all these identities are conflated under one label. It’s our responsibility to complicate these histories… and that’s also what the exhibition is about.”

Some histories required different approaches altogether. Abid searched for materials documenting the Muslim experience in New York after 9/11, a defining period for many MENA communities, and found few. “Our collections had gaps in that regard,” she says. But she discovered In My Own Skin. “It allowed me to tell that story,” she says. “The experience of those who were identified as Muslims in that moment of New York history that extends to the present day.”

Working with early ethnographic portraits also brings mixed feelings for her. “Yes, they are very ethnographic and they sometimes bother me,” she admits. But she finds value in using them to address cataloguing practices and inherited narratives. “What do we do with these materials? I love the challenge to almost subvert them and use them in a different way… than the stories we’ve heard already.”

Visitors have been responding strongly. “I was surprised to see friends or visitors getting very emotional,” Abid says. “They said we never felt seen or represented and here we’re on the walls of a New York institution.” For many, the library’s grand architecture can feel imposing; the exhibition seems to loosen that. “I’ve never seen this much diversity in the building,” Abid notes. “People who might feel intimidated by that majestic building… now see themselves here.”

And in that shift, the exhibition speaks not only to MENA communities but to many others whose histories in the city have been under-recognised. These are stories of contribution, erasure, cultural work carried out quietly, brilliance that has gone uncredited. “Absolutely,” Abid says when I suggest the show connects to a broader immigrant experience – the hidden labour, the silenced identities, the people whose influence shapes New York while their stories remain unnamed. Here, those stories are given space. The Algerian man on the wall is no longer a footnote. 

Niyū Yūrk: Middle Eastern and North African Lives in the City is on until 08 March, 2026 in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at the New York Public Library

“It’s important for us as Tunisian photographers, and not only for the Tunisian scene, to approach photo books from our own perspective”

Conceived as a bridge to Jaou Tunis, the biennale of image and moving image, Bound Narratives, co-curated with Iraqi photographer Abdul Hadi, aims to strengthen the Tunisian cultural scene through innovative curatorial formats that centre the photo book and the image. The festival’s ambition, according to Ghorbel, was not only to showcase work but also to re-anchor the project in Tunisia – bringing the photo book medium closer to local audiences and practitioners.

“This was the main idea behind bringing Bound Narratives to Tunis – it’s a project from artists from the MENA region but it was mostly showcased in Western countries. It made a lot of sense for us to bring this project to North Africa and create a one-of-kind event in the region,” says Ghorbel. “We have a lot of projects in the region about photography, about books and the arts, but not about photo books specifically.”

Initially envisioned as a small reading room, the project expanded into a large-scale exhibition featuring over 30 artists from across the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond – including Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and Lebanon. The show was organised around three curatorial threads: Longing and Belonging, Upheaval, and Reimagining Histories, exploring how artists use the photo book as a medium for counter-narratives, memory, and reclamation.

One of the festival’s most powerful undertones is its decolonial spirit – rethinking how visual narratives from the MENA region are produced, circulated, and historicised. As Ghorbel explains, for many Tunisian artists, exposure to photobooks has long been mediated through Western references and institutions. Bound Narratives challenged that by offering a platform built from within the region, featuring creators whose perspectives are often underrepresented in global publishing circuits.

“It’s important for us as Tunisian photographers, and not only for the Tunisian scene, to approach photo books from our own perspective. Here, we have mostly Western references and we don’t know what’s happening in the region. With this project, we discover the richness of projects that are happening that we didn’t have access to,” Ghorbel continues.

Panels such as “Independent Publishing in the Region,” moderated by Mohamed Somji of Gulf Photo Plus, created space for reflection on the infrastructures of artistic production. Participants included Tunisian voices such as Zied Ben Romdhane, Souheila Ghorbel, and Moez Akkari, founder of Bao Books, a new independent bookstore in Tunis.

These discussions culminated in the creation of a regional database of creators and publishing resources – an initiative toward sustainable collaboration and knowledge exchange.

Parallel to the exhibition, the festival hosted numerous workshops, concerts, and community programs. Egyptian photographer Heba Khalifa presented her work virtually, while Maen Hammad led a skate zine-making session with Tunis’s skating community – part of his ongoing Landing project linking youth collectives from Palestine to Colombia and the US. Landing is the inaugural publication of Saade’s publishing house, Huwawa, launched this year which expands his efforts to practice disruptive publishing focused on artists and local economies in the region. 

A key component of the ongoing festival is the Photobook-Making Lab, led by Tamara Abdul Hadi, Roï Saade, and Zied Ben Romdhane, in which ten Tunisian photographers are developing photobook dummies under mentorship. This lab reflects the festival’s commitment to capacity-building and to cultivating a self-sustaining photobook culture in Tunisia.

For Ghorbel, Bound Narratives represents a turning point: “Just by having only photobooks from the region is an achievement itself.” The exhibition revealed the multiplicity of approaches to bookmaking emerging from the Arab world – works that blend intimacy and politics, history and materiality.

Bound Narratives will continue its journey through a forthcoming presentation at Ibraaz, the newly relaunched London-based initiative by Lina Lazaar and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation. The aim is to engage with the London art scene and its diasporic communities, and to create new synergies between the foundation’s regional and international platforms.

Bound Narratives runs until 15 November at B7L9, Tunis. The exhibition A Photobook World closed its doors at B7L9 Art Centre on November 2. However, the Bound Narratives festival is still ongoing at Le 32bis through the Photobook-Making Lab.

Our Hidden Room is available here 

“I am interested in mothers, because especially in this region, motherhood is an important concept”

On the book’s cover, which is designed by Carel Fransen and published by The Eriksay Connection, a photograph of Hebron is turned on its side, shot with a flash from behind a fence, so the blockade reads initially as a diamond-shaped pattern. Flicking through it, moreover, feels not dissimilar from looking through a family album – there’s a familiarity and a tenderness, a naïve sensibility about the photographs, while the size of the images mirrors the traditional 6×4 proportions of personal prints. It’s a wonderful quality, disrupted only by the texts which provide context for the area. 

“Hebron is like a microcosm of settler violence,” asserts Debeuckelaere, sitting with researcher Kaat Somers in an empty meeting room at FOMU in Antwerp, where a new exhibition of the work has just opened. “It’s a very intense place, every step you take is political. It’s not Ramallah or Jerusalem, certainly not Gaza. It has a very specific situation and history.” Located in H2, which falls under the complete authority of Israel, Hebron is the only city in the West Bank with an Israeli settlement at its centre. These circumstances massively underscore the project’s impact; as the book’s coverline affirms: “Hebron women documenting daily life as the ultimate act of resistance.”

“The idea of the project, for me, was beautiful. It brought back memories of past days, how we used to use the camera,” reflects ‘Om Muntasser, one of the project’s participants, via a three-channel video installation at FOMU. “In my childhood, I always had a camera with me, at every occasion.” The film, for which several women were interviewed in Arabic, adds an important further layer to the works on display, some of which are framed, hung alongside a roll of negatives; many more feature in a slideshow, projected floor to ceiling in a second room, which commands, deservedly, you spend real time with it. “When I held the camera, it brought back emotions I had felt long ago,” ‘Om Wisam, separately, adds. “I used to handle a camera to photograph my children, on every moment, capture every movement, throughout their lives.”

Debeuckelaere’s decision to focus solely on Tel Rumeida’s women, and mothers in particular, was a reaction against the male narratives that typically dominate news from the area, oftentimes with a reference to violence (as Broomberg writes, “The whole of H2 feels intensely macho and masculine.”). While both genders are privy to the non-stop harassment of their settler neighbours, this perspective is less readily shared. “I am interested in mothers, because especially in this region, motherhood is an important concept,” shares Debeuckelaere. “The children they carry are the future of this country that is threatened. It’s really a political position; as a mother, you have a job to carry this country further. And they’re aware of that, it’s in their subconscious. [When] they talk about a motherland it’s not coincidental, it is very deliberate.” 

That the apparatus used was analogue was similarly significant, and several women have subsequently described the way it reshaped how they engaged with the objects in their home and wider environment, moving away from the more trivial nature of camera phones. Some have even continued the practice, reclaiming old hobbies: Just before we begin speaking in Antwerp, Debeuckelaere receives a text from Amro – Om’ Muntasser has acquired a film camera so she can photograph her daughter’s wedding the following day. “For sure, photography is art,” her likeness announces on a screen downstairs, “but it’s also a message that conveys reality in a tangible way.”

‘Om (Mother) is at FOMU until 28 September. The book is available at The Eriksay Connection, with all proceeds going back to the women of Tel Rumedia

In tandem with the urban stories, the commission When the Fog Whispers invited visitors to travel south to the mountains of Asir, with the final exhibition curated by Gulf Photo Plus’s Mohamed Somji. This series, developed through artist residencies and commission trips, offered a reflection on the region’s natural beauty, heritage, and complex identities. Photographers Abdulmajeed Al Roudhan, Elham Al Dawsari, Lina Geoushy, Mohamed Mahdy, and Hicham Gardaf captured Asir not simply as a landscape but as an emotional and cultural space. Geoushy’s portraits celebrated Al-Qatt Al-Asiri, the UNESCO-recognised women’s mural painting tradition, by placing its practitioners at the centre of the frame, dignified and present. Mahdy’s delicate compositions explored themes of belonging and the dialogue between people and land, rendering Asir as both a physical terrain and a space of introspection.

Beyond the exhibitions, the Kingdom Photography Award functioned as a living, breathing incubator for Saudi photographers. Workshops, artist-led talks, and mentorship sessions fostered critical exchange, while exploratory residencies  immersed participants in the textures of local life and tradition. With a prize pool of 400,000 SAR and pathways to international exposure, the programme is actively scaffolding the country’s growing photographic ecosystem.

In many ways, the Kingdom Photography Award reflects the broader cultural momentum of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 – a deliberate investment in the arts as a means to tell local stories on a global stage. What feels significant about this initiative is its rootedness; it is not borrowing narratives but cultivating homegrown ones, amplifying voices that see Saudi Arabia from within. 

The Kingdom’s photographic awakening aligns with a wider regional surge. Festivals like Qatar’s Tasweer Photo Festival are similarly platforming work that interrogates displacement, heritage, and everyday life from within the SWANA region. Both movements seem to signal a crucial shift: local photographers are no longer waiting for external validation.

@gardaf @linageoushy @majeed86 @elhamdawsari @mohamedmahdyph

Tasweer is not without its growing pains, in its curatorial choices and the standard of imagery, though it can only be growing as quickly as its regional industry which has admittedly been booming in recent years, but struggled to find footing beforehand. As I Lay… curator Meriem Berrada makes it clear that Tasweer dedicates itself to working with framers and designers in the Gulf in a bid to support local industry. Berrada’s curation is a highlight, as well as exhibition design, with images backlit to energise them and draw viewers in, complemented by the dark gallery space. 

Farah Al-Qasimi’s work from the UAE positively pops out in front of us in bright pinks and soft textiles, for example, whilst Taysir Batniji’s series is a more sombre meditation on exile from Gaza, displaying keys in a grid form with written captions from their owners, who were forced to abandon their homes in Gaza after Israeli bombardment. Other highlights were Ali Al Shehabi (Bahrain), Nadia Bseiso (Jordan), Reem Falaknaz (UAE), Hicham Gardaf (Morocco) and Ali Zarray (Egypt).

Joining the main exhibition, the Refractions: Tasweer Project Awards stands out as a display of the region’s talent, mostly emerging, forging a sense of excitement about the dynamism and diversity of West Asian and North African photography. The exhibition brings together images by 18 contemporary Arab photographers who won the 2023 and 2024 Tasweer Awards. Whereas Threads of Light: Stories from the Tasweer Single Image Awards, showcases 32 winning photographs from 2023 and 2024, representing photographers from 12 countries across the Arab world and beyond. 

Once again, the exhibition design is inviting and immersive, allowing for projects such as Maeen Aleryani’s series In My Eyes, Memories from Yemen to shine. Aleryani creates a mobile photo studio that serves as both an archive and an activation of collective memory in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. “In a country where traditional photography studios are disappearing and cultural spaces are shrinking due to the ongoing civil war, his work preserves visual memories for future generations” reads the description. 

From the Iraqi and Lebanese diaspora, duo Tamara Abdul Hadi and Roi Saade reimagine cartographic traditions in the context of Iraq’s complex colonial history through the banks of the Euphrates river, in Chorography of the Euphrates. It is a quiet, calming and gentle depiction of Iraqi life along the river, filled with biodiversity and life, despite the dire ecological situation of the country and its rivers today. It’s a feeling echoed in M’hammed Kilito’s work Before It’s Gone which documents Morocco’s endangered oasis ecosystems. Both projects are a damning response to climate change and human activity in the region. 

These shows, which end on 20 June, make up three of a whopping eight exhibitions set across Doha. Other important shows include Territories of the Instant, celebrating over three decades of work by Moroccan photographer and filmmaker Daoud Aoulad-Syad in Doha’s Katara district, and Obliteration – Surviving the Inferno: Gaza’s Battle for Existence, presenting powerful depictions of the ongoing war in Gaza, organised with Photo Humanity Grant.

Working with a smaller group of artists, Kane explains that the co-curators wanted to ensure “a diversity of perspectives and experiences in order to do justice to the notion of holding space. We wanted to really examine what this could look like and the different ways that communities show up for one another,” she tells me. Sifting through Thursday’s Child large roster of artists, Kane and Milner consulted with an expert panel, including Gem Fletcher and Lillian Wilkie, which helped them to ultimately shortlist the five artists included.

“We live in precarious times, and there are many valid reasons to feel angry, scared, and hopeless about the challenges ahead – for humanity, for society, and for the planet,” adds Milner. “But it’s also in times like these that we must remember the power of community and care.” For this reason, Holding Space became a method for the creatives involved to celebrate “all the many beautiful ways we show up for one another.” 

Flores, Lawati and Raajadharshini are all continuing to expand their respective bodies of work, and explore new projects too. Whilst Raajadharshini is hoping to work with individuals in unique and often overlooked occupations, such as the several “dying handicraft clusters in India,” Flores hopes to secure funding to continue her project, and to print and gift the images to the women involved. She’s also hoping to curate an exhibition in Urubamba, Cusco. And Lawati is keen to return to Nepal to explore the skate and music scenes in Kathmandu, Nepal, “hoping that eventually, a book will come to fruition.”

Tasweer Photo Festival Qatar

“Tatreez is a touchstone to Palestinian national identity in political posters and imagery in the 70s and 80s”

Thread Memory is the latest version of a project that’s been unfolding since 2013, when the Palestinian Museum first invited Dedman to curate a show about tatreez. That exhibition, At the Seams, was staged in Beirut, and eventually published as a book. It was the result of months spent moving through the region – across refugee camps and villages – tracing the ways in which tatreez had operated as both craft and financial means. “I wanted to unpack the economic question around the empowerment offered by organisations,” she explains, “as well as what it means on a personal and political level.”

That collaboration focused in large part on the Museum’s digital archive – a vast resource of over 500,000 documents, many of them photographic. While tatreez is the visible thread through the show, the photographs provide a sense of social and political texture. “The show is not only immersing visitors in the heyday of tatreez in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” Dedman says, “but also extends that story beyond the Nakba of 1948 to engage the politicisation of tatreez and evolution of the craft associated with solidarity and kinship.”

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, tatreez began to appear in protest posters, political pamphlets, and exile literature as “a touchstone to national identity in political posters and imagery in the 70s and 80s,” Dedman explains. One image by Joss Dray, 1997, depicts a woman in tatreez confronting an Israeli soldier, a perfect pictorial example of the political role of embroidery, and the central role of women. 

The legacy of visual symbolism carries through Thread Memory, where archival material isn’t neutral; it’s radically local. Images are drawn not from state institutions or foreign-held collections “like the Library of Congress”, notes the curator, but from families. “Palestine through Palestinian eyes,” Dedman calls it. “These are family snapshots rather than staged images which support a colonial or foreign European narrative or projected ideal of Palestine,” which humanise the women who made and wore these clothes, and locate their daughters and granddaughters today. The show ultimately says, then, that: Palestine was here and Palestine persists.

In a context where Palestinian visibility is often distorted or erased altogether, the simple act of showing someone as they were – in their own clothes, on their own land, captured by someone who knew them – becomes radical. The show also includes three mobile phones which capture the IDF’s deliberate targeting of the Rafah Museum, which was housing Palestinian heritage artefacts. The phones play out a real WhatsApp conversation and voice notes from staff on the ground in Rafah, Gaza. Though Dedman has been exploring the sartorial and cultural heritage of Gaza in many of her previous shows before 7 October 2023, the current ethnic and cultural cleansing makes Thread Memory vital, urgent and necessary. 

Thread Memory runs until 17 April 2025 at Hayy Jameel and will open at V&A Dundee on 26 June.

“I try to find pictures that convey the same emotion I get when I walk in to my aunt’s living room”

The opening image of Living Rooms – the publishing house’s latest book, made up of 41 photographers – is a woman peeking out of a window in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. “I love the patterns of it,” Baddar comments. “That’s why I put it as the first photo. Everything blends so well.” The photographer’s name is missing from the page, but turn to the end and you’ll find a glossary of names beside each image. This one is by a British photographer, Olivia Arthur. 

Baddar acknowledges the complexity of curating and sourcing visuals for each publication, noting that her concern isn’t necessarily who shot an image, but rather what the image depicts. In an attempt to assert that beauty still exists and that it’s not “just one big miserable shit hole,” as mainstream media might have it, she combines archival imagery with contemporary visuals – the latter captured mostly by independent photographers within the MENA region and its diaspora. 

Born in Amsterdam, Baddar has never lived in Morocco, but refers to it as home through frequent family visits. “We always go to my aunt’s and the entire family sits in her living room,” she recalls. “I try to find pictures that convey the same emotion I get when I walk in. We just sit there and it’s so funny because some of them don’t want to go home, so we sit on the floor and they sleep on the couch. A few hours pass and we’re having dinner, and then a few more hours pass and it’s the call for prayer, so then we pray.” 

Flipping through the book, she shows me a double-page spread of a woman dancing amongst a group of people in Fez, 1984, captured by the late Morocco-born French photographer, Bruno Barbey. “This is seriously how it would look if all my aunties and cousins had dinner,” she smiles. “It doesn’t have to be a wedding or anything, but it will turn into this. I like it because it’s so close to home.” 

Familiar experiences and the presence of loved ones are reflected throughout multiple images in Living Rooms, such as the work of Ali Al Shehabi and the late, renowned photographer Abbas. Bahrain-born Al Shehabi draws on nostalgia, storytelling and soft humour as inspiration for his practice. The book features a prominent image of his, where a man sits on the floor chewing a toothpick while a woman, presumed to be his mother, braids his hair – an image we don’t often see. Shot on the morning of Eid, it serves as a heartwarming reminder of the gestures of love that take place within the comfort of one’s home. 

Abbas’ images also display gestures of love and simple moments of joy – a family sharing a meal together, a group of men celebrating. These images provide a contrasting narrative to the usual documentation of wars, revolutions and religion that he was so well known for. 

Baddar points out some photos by Miriam Stanke, a German documentary photographer whose work follows themes of identity, post-war trauma, religion, and the way history affects generations. One of her images shows a Kurdish mother, Fatma Timus, sitting in her living room in 2015 beneath a framed photo of her daughter. Traces of existence are a common thread amongst these images, often displayed with pride. Similar themes are found throughout the work of the Netherlands-based Palestinian photographer and director Sarkir Khader, also featured in the book. Much of Khader’s images are a raw documentation of the quotidian life experienced across the Middle East, particularly in Palestine. 

The book closes with a double-page spread of a sofa against a window, overlooking a vast landscape. The image was captured in 2020 by Rita Kabalan, taken while looking at restored furniture from Arc En Ciel in Damour, Lebanon. The October 2019 wildfires had taken place a year prior to the photo being taken, giving rise to the revolution just days later.

Although Living Rooms invites us to consider an alternative notion to the typical death and destruction associated with the region, it recognises the complex reality of those that call it home. Some experience grief while others may not. Some may remain still in the aftermath of grief while others find warmth and joy. The photos in Living Rooms exist as an archive of history and memories that lie within the walls – walls that aren’t dictated by a set of rules.

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“We have a very rich history, heritage, and culture. The problem is the traditions that we can’t seem to change. The weight of the past is suffocating us despite this facade of modernity”

The work was socio-political in the same way his series Ânes Situ (Donkey in situ) was a statement about the paradoxes in Casablanca that have resulted from quick development, where contemporary architecture and luxurious cars like Bentleys share the same roads as donkeys. And his work, The Hole, used the image of a pothole as a metaphor for people who are stuck, trying to get themselves out of the way they are living but trapped by their circumstances. In fantastical imagery that is completely real but highly unlikely, he reflects on Moroccan society and the ways in which he thinks that it doesn’t function.

After seven years of living in France, Benohoud returned to Morocco to find a country that had embraced the internet and was globally-minded, but where, for the average person in society, not much had changed. “Despite the modernity that has caught up with us, Moroccans struggle to free themselves,” he says. “We have a very rich history, heritage, and culture. The problem I’m pointing out is the traditions we’ve inherited and that we can’t seem to change. The weight of the past is suffocating us despite this facade of modernity. It’s their right and sometimes even their duty for people to cling to their past. We’re obliged to obediently follow this heritage without questioning it because if we don’t respect it, it can become a crime.”

Since coming to power in 1999, King Mohammed VI has pursued an ambitious modernisation agenda in Morocco with a series of reforms that have improved the economy, schooling and infrastructure of the country. Every rural Moroccan now has access to electricity and drinking water (up from less than half in 2000); while average life expectancy has increased and the absolute poverty rate has declined. But, he told the Guardian: “You see people driving in the wrong direction on the motorway, or not stopping at red lights; others throwing stuff out of windows; donkeys weaving through traffic. There are laws, but everyone just does as they please. It is the world upside-down.”

In The Hole, Benohoud takes photographs of homeowners in Marrakech’s old medina in rooms that look like so many others in Morocco, with low sofas and patterned cushions, kilim rugs, and tiled floors. But his compositions are uncanny. Blending humour and absurdity with the real, he captures two men dangling upside-down as they break through holes in the ceiling’s plaster-work; a woman sitting, unperturbed, in a hole carved in her chequered floor. Body parts, like hands, torsos and feet, punch through walls. “The idea is to show a society swallowed up in a hole and unable to get out,” says Benohoud.

“In everyday life, much like in Western countries, we are suffering from inflation and the gap is widening more and more between the rich and other social classes,” he says. In 2015, he began photographing “people working hard to make ends meet” in his native Marrakech, asking strangers if he could dig holes in their living room floors, walls and ceilings. Then he photographed the homeowners poking out of them. Although the images look photoshopped, in reality: “I arrive with a small team made up of masons, painters, tilers and choose a place in the house, often in the living room, because there is more space and step back to take pictures.”

The work lasts a day or two even if the shots don’t last more than a few seconds, he says. In one picture, ten holes were carved in a small room with orange furniture, a pot of tea stewing on a silver platter on the floor, while more than half a dozen people poke their bodies through. The expressions on their faces are comical, like they might laugh at any point. In another, three walls in a series of narrow rooms are carved, a person sitting in each, that gives the feel of an optical illusion; meanwhile a woman sits in her hole beside a pile of rubble, a bunch of colourful flowers nearby.

Before digging Benohoud will make sure that he can find the same tiles, with the same colours and patterns, in specialist stores so that he can replace what he has destroyed, and instructs the workers to put everything back as if nothing had happened at all. 

Sometimes several families live in the same house and each family occupies only one bedroom, while other spaces are often communal. The families he photographs “organise their interiors within their means.” In one picture, three men emerge from the red and black, woven-carpet of a small living room, all of them looking towards the austere yellow walls blankly. In another, six hands clasp each other in sets of three handshakes. 

“The individual does not exist in our society because it is all about the community, the tribe, and the family. What can the individual facing the power of these entities do? Either respect the rules, values, and traditions or he is condemned to exclusion or marginalisation.” Feeling trapped is not always about wealth and social status but also by the intensity of community more generally.

Benohoud’s work is a conversation about freedom and control, as well as “this question of power,” he says. By distorting reality and comparing unlikely things, he offers a light-hearted critique of post-colonial identity, showing both the hope and despair he sees in society. “For society to move forward, it is necessary for it to allow its citizens this freedom of expression without any value judgment. It must accept criticism and different, even contradictory, points of view. For the rest, on the economic level for example, we are fighting just like Westerners to improve daily life, whether in terms of the economy, health, or education.”

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“Sometimes, when you try to clash two different cultures, it can come out wrong. Mine just worked because I tried to stay true to what was around me”

People of My Time presents a “village-like” representation of global identities, emphasising the diversity of his subjects but also Hajjaj’s desire to build a community around shared heritage, blending traditional practices with pop culture references of the current moment. The show also deals with Hajjaj’s time in a more literal sense: the artist enjoys viewing the work as memories of moments in time, as well as the journeys he’s been on. Designing much of the clothing his models are wearing, Hajjaj says that “I might have bought the fabric in Ludlow Street in New York and then I made it in Marrakesh, or I bought a fabric in Brick Lane and had it made in Marrakesh and shot it in LA. So there’s a lot of personal journeys there that people probably won’t see because all the shots are made out on the streets.”

Hajjaj’s upbringing in Morocco and later in London deeply shaped his artistic lens. “When I became a Londoner. I lived the London lifestyle,” he says. The influence of London’s creative scene in the 1980s – fashion, music, and running club nights through his brand Rap Street – helped him develop a unique artistic language that merges Moroccan traditions with contemporary global culture. However, this fusion is never forced: “Sometimes, when you try to clash two different cultures, it can come out wrong. Mine just worked because I tried to stay true to what was around me.”

The show reflects his growth as an artist, with images captured in various locations over 30 years, evolving from early street photography to his now well-known Maghrebi sets featuring seated, stylised subjects. In true North African and Middle Eastern fashion, Hajjaj incorporates recycled and repurposed materials in his work, reflecting the Moroccan tradition of reuse. Rich in symbolism creating a dialogue between East and West, Hajjaj uses twine, tarpaulin and scarfs featuring prints such as the keffiyeh. 

“I grew up with a culture of recycling in Morocco. That was just normal. When I started shooting, I was using counterfeit products – I’d go and buy a Louis Vuitton scarf and make a kaftan out of it. Or buy the cheap blankets we use everywhere in Africa, the ones that look like Versace, and make an outfit out of them.” His signature style includes branded elements like Coca-Cola logos in Arabic, reframing Western symbols within his cultural lens. Cultural symbolism leaps out from the image and literally frames the images, with frames made from harissa cans, spice jars and colourful tins of tea leaves.

Hajjaj is currently collaborating with Tunisian graffiti artist El Seed on a limited-edition olive oil project, designing bottles and preparing a solo exhibition on-site. He has a potential museum show in Marrakesh, a project for the African Football Cup in Morocco, and solo exhibitions planned in France and Australia.

Hajjaj’s community-driven practice will also activate the gallery with a teashop, inspired by Jajjah, his tearoom and gallery space in Marrakech. By inviting audiences to gather and converse over a cup of Moroccan tea, the gallery is transformed into a tangible, homely extension of the work on view.

People of My Time is on view at Hannah Traore Gallery until 5 April.
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