Sharjah’s Xposure festival celebrates culture, beauty

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

The sixth edition of Xposure International Photography Festival, a premier global event dedicated to celebrating the art of photography, will bring to Sharjah a wide spectrum of stunning images from across the world that cut across genres and formats, and celebrate culture, beauty, adventure, and humanity.

Held for the first time over seven days from February 9 to 15 at Expo Centre Sharjah, Sharjah’s annual celebration of photography will host solo and group exhibitions featuring a diverse lineup of photo talent, including both emerging and established contemporary photographers from around the world.

From jaw-dropping nature-inspired visuals and stories that offer hope and inspiration to powerful visuals that offer compelling insights into personal experiences, historical events, and more, the exhibitions at Xposure 2022 will engage the public and draw a larger audience into the art and appreciation of photography. The annual festival also serves as a platform to propel emerging photographers from the region onto the international stage.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS: Emirates Falcons Photography Society speaks to the souls of the viewers through ‘Desert’ that showcases the natural environment and beauty of the Arabian desert while ‘PSA Omnibus’ features works mainly from the local chapter members of the Photographic Society of America (PSA).

Photographers from all over the world whose pictures best express the idea that our future lies in peaceful coexistence will be represented in the ‘Global Peace Photo Award’ exhibition, while the images under ‘Siena International Photography Awards’ feature works of professional and amateur photographers from all around the world.

‘Into The Wild’ is an exhibition by PhotoWalk Connect that explores wildlife photography through images of wild and rugged landscapes of the Masai Mara in Kenya and exciting array of big and small creatures. In ‘Revolution’, the visual evolution of changing pop style is encapsulated through the decade-defining images of the 1960s by three photographers – Terry O’Neill, Gered Mankowitz and Ed Caraeff.

The fascinating collection of images under ‘Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY)’ depicts different photographic styles including reportage, editorial, advertising, documentary, and offers insights into the stories behind these award-winning photographs.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS: Steve McCurry’s most memorable body of works featuring the perfect combination of light, composition, and tonality and which conveys the essence of humanity are part of a retrospective titled ‘Iconic’. These images, shot over four decades, tell stories that cross boundaries of language and culture.

Acclaimed photojournalist James Nachtwey’s ‘Unvanquished’ puts a human face on the social and political narratives of our times and documents history in the making through four decades of capturing conflicts, disasters and disease across the globe, while the destruction and humanitarian tragedy of war and its impact on human lives are eloquently portrayed in Muhammed Muheisen’s ‘Life and War’ and Jana Andert’s ‘Inside the war on ISIS’.

Michel Rawicki offers an in-depth look at a region of the planet that is at the heart of climate change in ‘Call of the Cold’; Omar Havana speaks of the struggles and resilience of the people of Nepal following a devastating earthquake in ‘Endurance’; Lurie Belegurschi captures the retreat of Iceland’s glaciers in ‘Iceland: The Land of Fire and Ice’; and Jordan Hammond shows the diversity of life found within the islands of Bali, Java, and Sumbawa in ‘Indonesia’.

Bangladesh-based Ibrahim Iqbal raises issues of universal health care, disease prevention and the unmet needs of the lower socioeconomic strata in ‘Aamar Hospital’; Garcia de Marina’s ‘Innocents’ is a symbolic representation of the biases and injustices in society; while in ‘Argish. Long way home’, Daniel Kordan captures the annual migration of people from the Yamal region in Russia.

George Georgiou crisscrossed through 24 cities in the US covering 26 parades to bring alive people, families, movement, and a sea of sound in ‘Americans Parade’; Frank Fournier portrays the fiery charm of New York in the mid-1970s in ‘Red Eye’; while Tariq Zaidi reveals the fashion culture of the capital cities of Congo Kinshasa and Congo Brazzaville in ‘Sapeurs: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congo’.

Chris Rainier observes the deep spiritual meaning and powerful relationship of cultures around the world with ‘Mask’ and Biljana Jurukovski shares the beauty of body painting and extravagant decorations of tribes in Africa’s Omo Valley in ‘Tribal Muses – The Avant-Garde of the tribal world.’

Kiran Ridley documents the human face of a social movement in ‘Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Protests: The Revolution of Our Time’; Gonçalo Fonseca’s images spanning a 5-year period show ‘How Portugal Won the War on Drugs’; Diego Ibarra Sánchez’s ‘The Phoenician Collapse’ is an intimate examination of the complex Lebanese social mosaic in the time of an unfolding national economic crisis; and Debi Cornwall’s ‘Welcome to Camp America: Inside Guantánamo Bay’ is a riveting exhibition marked by empathy and dark humour that investigates the human experience for both prisoners and guards at the detention centre.