Lamya Gargash

Lamya Gargash was born in 1982 in Dubai, UAE. To this day, she still lives and works there. She has won several awards by documenting the private places and forgotten spaces in the Emirati society. Gargash studied Visual Communications at the American University in Sharjah and graduated there in 2004.

She takes photographs of unwanted buildings. From the semi-abandoned to the soon-to-be demolished. She has documented this very well in one of her projects called 'Presence'. A series of photographs that show a young culture that, after the oil boom, came to life and is now quickly becoming extinct because of the need to modernise everything at amazing speed. According to Gargash this leaves very little time to grief over spaces like this and therefore felt the old culture needed to be documented before this new identity was to take over. Although that is just one series, most of her photographs seem to follow this theme.

Her images really bring across this feeling of being abandoned to me. Looking at them and trying to put myself in the environment, I almost get the feeling I have to get out before the wrecking ball comes flying in. Dark rooms, empty kitchens and broken staircases make for stunning images of otherwise forgotten places. Really quite impressive. I never imagined I would've been impressed with images like this, but for some reason they have really touched something inside me.

Image Sources:

http://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/el-resplandor.html