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désir désert

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The landscapes I choose to work in are somehow remote areas (in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Yemen) where traces of human activity can be found: material memories of a presence, of a living culture. These places in the middle of nowhere have often a special power and this is what I want to capture. 

The images itself leave a lot of space to ask questions or to interpret them. They do not only show what they show, some of the images show more:… an ensemble of stones and wood becomes an art installation, trash of metal and stones spread all over the sand become related, significant objects in a fascinating desert landscape.

The unused ground could be a new form of the alternative landscape, a contemporary variant of what nature – the unspoiled desert dunes, the mountains and the sea – has always been for the travellers of past centuries. This requires a different view of the landscape, one that frees the landscape from an interpretative frame work which couples every object with ‘known’ social issues like economic disintegration, environmental crisis or post war situations.

It is a matter of seeing the ground as a written page, a text of gradual time, with inscriptions, stories and anecdotes. The ruinous landscape remains somehow a ghostly tableau, but can function as an open gate leading to another far horizon, the sea or the mountains.  These “desertscapes” are post modern in the sense they consist of recognizable elements brought together in a new constellation.

In the Arab world this view does practically not exist. The over all tendency to glorify the beauty of the desert, the harmony of the past Bedouin life and its heritage is a constant threat. (…)

K.D. march 1997

“Important pictures were never about particular landscapes, they were visual metaphors, designed not to lead us to specific points on the map but beyond them and back to life itself…”

Minor White (landscape photographer)

Excerpts from Arabic press articles from Kuwait journal.