FirstLook: Jumeirah Beach, Dubai
- Arts
- Photography
Photograph by Bjorn Moerman
As an airline pilot, I have visited many places. In few have I seen such an impressive city expansion as in Dubai, my home for more than 15 years. Historically a pearl-trading center, Dubai has reinvented itself in just a few decades—together with its six neighboring emirates—into one of the world’s busiest business, cultural and tourism centers.
During a walk on a Friday afternoon I came upon one of the weekend football matches that are popular along the sands of Jumeirah Beach. As the players seemed to mirror the skyline of Sheikh Zayed Road behind them, they made the city seem both big and small at the same time. I stopped to photograph the ebb and flow of the game as the light warmed toward sunset. At this particular moment, the players looked as if they had been arranged almost as deliberately as the buildings, and the sand reflected, for that instant, not the forms of the towers but the humanity that built them.
A few of the players looked up and waved to me; I replied with quick hellos. I didn’t learn where they were from, or where they work during the week. Like me, they could belong to any of the more than 200 nationalities that make this one of the world’s most diverse places. They turned back to the game; I walked on.
www.bjornmoerman.com
During a walk on a Friday afternoon I came upon one of the weekend football matches that are popular along the sands of Jumeirah Beach. As the players seemed to mirror the skyline of Sheikh Zayed Road behind them, they made the city seem both big and small at the same time. I stopped to photograph the ebb and flow of the game as the light warmed toward sunset. At this particular moment, the players looked as if they had been arranged almost as deliberately as the buildings, and the sand reflected, for that instant, not the forms of the towers but the humanity that built them.
A few of the players looked up and waved to me; I replied with quick hellos. I didn’t learn where they were from, or where they work during the week. Like me, they could belong to any of the more than 200 nationalities that make this one of the world’s most diverse places. They turned back to the game; I walked on.
www.bjornmoerman.com
You may also be interested in...
FirstLook: Duet
Arts
“Duet” comes from the Latin root word duo which means two. The Duet series focuses on double portraits, a tradition in West Africa.
Hijrah: A Journey That Changed the World
History
Arts
Avoiding main roads due to threats to his life, in 622 CE the Prophet Muhammad and his followers escaped north from Makkah to Madinah by riding through the rugged western Arabian Peninsula along path whose precise contours have been traced only recently. Known as the Hijrah, or migration, their eight-day journey became the beginning of the Islamic calendar, and this spring, the exhibition "Hijrah: In the Footsteps of the Prophet," at Ithra in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, explored the journey itself and its memories-as-story to expand understandings of what the Hijrah has meant both for Muslims and the rest of a the world. "This is a story that addresses universal human themes," says co-curator Idries Trevathan.
FirstLook: Ramadan Picnic
Arts
On a warm June evening, people gathered at a park in Bethesda, Maryland, for a community potluck dinner welcoming the start of Ramadan.