riyadh
In Riyadh, I set out to explore how the old and the new meet within the city’s changing landscape. In certain neighborhoods, seen from a particular angle, buildings from different periods appear to merge into a single composition. Their differences remain visible, yet they seem at ease with one another. I am interested in these moments of coexistence, when the city’s successive transformations from desert scape to high-rises can be read together within the same frame.
This is my first project in which archival photographs and historical documents do not determine the compositions. The present-day city itself provides the material: its buildings, the spaces between them, and the relationships that emerge as I move through it. The camera’s position becomes a way of bringing different periods into dialogue, revealing connections that might otherwise pass unnoticed.
A few photographs recall the visual language of postcards from the 1970s and 1980s. I included them as an intermediate layer between the older structures, dating from the first half of the twentieth century, and the architecture associated with the development that followed the discovery of oil. Together, these images explore how change accumulates within a place, and how the past continues to shape the city even as its surroundings are transformed.
