The Jadaliyya Photography and Audiovisual Narratives Page is an online space to showcase and discuss visual narratives from and/or about the Middle East and North Africa. The page serves both as a knowledge resource about visual production in the region, and also as a platform through which to expand perspectives related to how the region is represented, how communities see themselves, and one another.
There is no shortage of visual content on the region, most often narrated by outsiders. The Photography and Visual Narratives Page invites visual content creators to discuss and contextualize photography beyond mere regional boundary-making and to focus on acts of intimate personal telling. The platform is conceptualized as shared one with local creatives, a space for agency to present complex and creative local narratives both to their own communities and toward broader publics (instead of looking toward platforms outside of the region to do so). In this way, the conversations are brought closer to home for many creatives and content providers. At the same time, the online catalog may be used by international editors at media outlets seeking to diversify their rosters of visual storytellers.
As an online space, the Photography Page offers audio-visual material, educational resources, archival content, and media roundups. It is a platform to foster networking, exhibition, community building, resource sharing by and with innovative audio-visual narrators. We welcome comments and contributions to the new page at photo@jadaliyya.com.
With the relaunch of Jadaliyya’s Photography Page, now known as the Photography and Visual Narratives Page, we seek to make a critical intervention into the conversations around image production, storytelling, and representation in our region. We seek to enhance opportunities for narration from within the region, and to find meaningful ways to collaborate with artists, curators, researchers, and collectives working to create and amplify their own platforms. Our hope is to open a space of nuanced narrative construction while at the same time support the growing field of photography in the region. Instead of forced flat-lining and linear narration—accommodating mainstream Western and regional publications—we celebrate the expanded approach of multiplatform and multimedia, and the complexities of our stories. The personal is political! The innovation of storytelling in our region, to find ways to circumvent political suppression to tell our stories has never been stronger. We are a convener of experience, knowledge, and resources. Welcome to our community.
[This announcement represents the re-launch of the existing Photography Page, run previously by the able Michelle Woodward, under a new team and mission with a slightly modified title: Photography and Visual Narratives Page. The new Photography and Visual Narratives Page is co-edited by Mariam Alarab, Tanya Habjouqa, Maryam al-Khasawneh, Abdo Shanan, Mohamed Somji, and Faris Treish.]
Articles
Jadaliyya Launches the Photography and Visual Narratives Page
Visuals of a Setting That You Don't Know
Is This What You Mean by Intersectionality?
Media Roundup
Photography and Visual Narratives Media Roundup
Resources
Event: Battle of Algiers Film Discussion (7 July)
Vox Oculi: Prints for Yemen (by Shaima Al-Tamimi)
For A Narrative that is Yours
NEWTONs from the Archives
Gabriel Varghese, Palestinian Theatre in the West Bank: Our Human Faces (New Texts Out Now)
Greg Burris, The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (New Texts Out Now)
See the film discussion of the Battle of Algiers here: