‘Lens for Equality’: Artists participate in intensive photography workshop in Riyadh
An intensive 10-day German-Franco-Saudi photography workshop in Riyadh which aimed to explore the concept of equality through photography concluded on Tuesday.
The workshop, which kicked off on October 2, was held in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, Alliance Français in Saudi Arabia and Gharem Studio under the slogan ‘Lens for Equality.’
During the workshop, participants were able explore the topic of gender equality through their work by expressing themselves.
Three professors from Saudi Arabia, Germany and France offered intensive courses to 15 students.
“A lot of the image that is constructed around men and women, landscape, animals, how we treat our people, what is visible and what is invisible…was subject to the workshop,” Artistic Photography Susanne Kriemann, one of the professors, told Al Arabiya English.
Kriemann said that the workshop was also a place where the participants could explore the concept of equality by underscoring how both men and women “look at each other and how the woman is not only the object that is photographed in a picture, but also is a photograph[er] herself.”
“We were trying to move away from the classical way of looking at women in photographic lens,” she said, adding “they would determine how they want to be depicted in the picture.”
“It was interesting to see the results of their work.”
Saudi Arabia has made a lot of cultural and entertainment reforms since the launch of the ambitious Vision 2030 – a transformative economic and social reform blueprint – in 2016.
