Ali Karimi and Camille Zakharia: Photo A La Chair

A caravan of culture project captures the soul of Bahrain

Ali Karami and Camille Zakharia, From the project Photos A La Chair 4. Background artist Mai Al Moataz (2018). Courtesy of Camille Zakharia.

With text by E. Nina Rothe, journalist and blogger.

“Photography is truth” goes the first half of a now infamous quote by French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. Yet in case of the Photos A La Chair project, photography also turns into a tool to capture and highlight the history behind that truth: the culture, heritage and natural landscape of the country of Bahrain.

Born in 2017 out of the collaboration between Bahraini-born architect Ali Ismail Karimi and Lebanese photographer-slash-engineer Camille Zakharia, Photos A La Chair can only be described as a meeting of minds, featuring great local artists in a public community setting and highlighting the various people who call Bahrain home. Do not expect to be moved by the global intimacy of their images troubled by their beauty.

Zakharia explains that he first yearned to collaborate with Karimi when he saw his installation during Al Riwaq, The Nest, in 2017 and that work touched him. But he also noticed a “lonely, almost sad” aspect to it and thus decided that he “needed to do something with the place to activate it.” One of the things that came to his mind was to move the work to a public setting and “to have an artwork placed as a backdrop and have passerby sit on a bench.” That’s how the Photos A La Chair project started, with the first backdrop provided by Bahraini artist Mohammad Sharkawi and shot in the hip neighborhood of Adliya in Manama.

Their collaborations have included Bahrain-based artists Jaffar Al Oraibi, Abs Khan, Sonu the Dhol Magician, Zuhair AlSaeed, Mohammad Bu Hassan, Mai Al Moataz and Ghada Khunji, in settings that range from Malkiya Beach to the Royal Camel Farm in Janabiya, the Bahrain Fort Museum and, most recently, A’ali Village. Karimi admits that their dream location is the Bahr Valley, a rocky valley that turns into a small lake- hence the name “little sea”-when the weather is nice. But until they get there, Zakharia admits, they are indeed “enjoying the ride!”

While it may seem almost magical that Zakharia and Karimi have not really has to pitch the project since, as Karimi explains they have “been pretty lucky because after the third event, people have been approaching us, “there is another explanation for that. Karimi clarifies that they “haven’t had to pitch the project to institutions because we don’t need permission on funding,” for their sessions, adding further that “Bahrain is a small country and a small art community but there aren’t a lot of chances to experiment formally.”

The result of this meeting of a different disciplines-architecture, photography and even the art of collage from Zakharia’s background- has been a series of encounters, in public spaces within Bahrain featuring, as Karimi points out “people who have no engagement in the arts and do not attend galleries or museum or art shows.” The artists and their occasional participant find this juxtaposition exciting and the people who view on Instagram the photographs which emerge from the project are immediately captivated by their multiple layers of splendor. Be it elegant horses adorned in tassels, dapper looking men in their best thawb or the profiles of beautiful women of different heritages, Photos A La Chair possesses a spirit all its own, which has to be viewed to be believed.