Near the shining buildings of Abu Dhabi in the industrial area of Mussafah lay Shabiya 12,
home to emigrant building workers and their families.
Here wealth and poverty brush without intersecting, at just half an hour drive from
Emirates Palace, the 7 stars gold cladded palace-hotel.
Shabiya is the unwilling victim of the idea of a modern city: glittering, optimistic, defiant.
But if the area is deemed to a better future, the future of the people living there is far
more uncertain.
Eviction. Demolition. Shatters, Displacement.
The door curtains moving to the wind represent the people of Shabiya, with their quest for
modesty, but also the major forces at play shattering their ideals.
And the vivid colors that sometimes appear can be interpreted as a mark of the resilience
of the inhabitants against the odds.
This photographic body of work would like to be a testimony of this people that
anonymously built the city that eventually evicted them.
He approaches his subjects in two ways. One is from a geometrical and rational perspective, possibly trying to find the abstract in reality and attempting to rationalize it.
The other is from a sociological perspective, investigating the social, economical and historical context of also minimal aspects of reality that, like in a fractal, represent the whole.
He believes that these processes inevitably lead to a more intimate knowledge and appreciation of the reality before him.
Awards He exhibited in Rome, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Los Angeles. He was finalist of Focus Photo
LA Winter 2018.
He was finalist of Portrait of Humanity 2019 by British Journal of Photography and Magnum Photos.
He was finalist of Hahnemühle FineArt Competition.
He won third prize at the Fotoforum (DE) contest: “People”.
He received honorable mentions at IPA-International Photography Awards and PX3 - Prix de la Photographie, Paris.
His works have been published in Silvershotz, Artillery Magazine, L’Oeil de la Photographie,
Aint Bad Magazine, F-Stop Magazine, Your Daily Photograph, “Portrait of Humanity” Hoxton Mini Press. Fotoforum Magazine.
