Arts, Culture and Sport
Photography: a thousand faces of modern Sudan
Through his project, ‘1000 Portraits from Sudan’, photographer, Ahmad Abushakeema, is doing his bit to show the diversity of his country through photos of everyday people.
1,000 faces from Sudan
Sudanese photographer, Ahmad Abushakeema, is on a mission to show the cultural, ethnic and religious diversity of his country not often seen in the media by simply photographing and showcasing portraits of everyday people.
Through his project, ‘1,000 Portraits from Sudan’, Abushakeema has taken hundreds of pictures and hopes to carry on till he gets to a thousand portraits. Some of the photos are candid, others are staged. But all are of people in Sudan, be they natives or foreigners, and each tells a different story, represents a face of modern Sudan.
“I have always thought of photography as my way to tell stories, probably because I find photography to be one of the most expressive forms of art,” Abushakeema told The Voix.
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Photo from the ‘1,000 Portraits from Sudan’ project. Photo: portraitat.tumblr.com
The street photographer
Abushakeema, 27, is an engineering student at Khartoum University. He lived for 17 years in Saudi Arabia before returning to his country, Sudan. He soon realised that the diversity of his society was underreported in the media, hence, he took up the task himself, a portrait at a time.
“I want people to look at the project and understand the cultural range and multitude of our backgrounds and histories,” he said in an interview with the Gahwa Project.
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For the project, which is still ongoing, the self-taught photographer goes on the street and approaches strangers with requests to have their pictures taken. Sometimes, though, he is contacted by people who want to be featured on the project. The project will be completed, hopefully, by the end of 2016, when he reaches his mark of a thousand portraits—not every photo taken makes it into the collection.
To view more pictures from the ‘1,000 Portraits of Sudan’, visit the project page and on Instagram.
Photo from the ‘1,000 Portraits from Sudan’ project. Photo: portraitat.tumblr.com
