Book Release ‘An Archive of love’
Middle East Archive is a publishing platform dedicated to reimagining and celebrating the visual narratives of the Middle East and North Africa. With a keen curatorial vision, it highlights everyday moments and interactions that reflect the authentic lived experiences of the region, presented through candid, unfiltered photography.When the platform began its tour to release An Archive of Love back in 2023, I reached out to invite them to launch the book in Dubai — a city that felt both symbolically and geographically fitting for such a celebration of love across the region. Curating this launch at East West, a gallery/café located in the creative hub of Dubai, Al Quoz, allowed me to bring the project into dialogue with a wider audience and to create a meaningful space for exchange around the visual culture of the MENA region.
An Archive of Love is a sincere visual exploration and celebration of love across the Middle East and North Africa.
In a region too often viewed through the lens of unrest or romanticized through an orientalist gaze, street photography offers something vital: honesty. This book brings together intimate, candid moments that reveal love in all its forms — subtle or bold, romantic or platonic, spiritual, paternal, fraternal — as seen and felt in everyday life across the MENA region.
Photographers
Spanning from the late 1960s to early 2022, the photographs were taken in Morocco, Algeria, Iraq, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Oman, Yemen, UAE, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Kurdistan, and beyond. The book features work by a wide range of photographers, including some of our favourites — Attar Abbas, Raymond Depardon, Rachid Ouettassi, among many others.
Text
The book includes a preface, introduction, and four beautifully written texts: Lovers’ Stroll, Ritual and Devotion, Beyond the Bonds of Blood, and The Immortal Olive Tree, authored by Nour Regaya and Dalia Al-Dujaili, and translated by Mourad Nusair.
Book Release ‘An Archive of Love’ by Middle East Archive x East West - Dubai, May 2023.
Raymond Depardon (Magnum Photos), Lebanon, 1965
Raymond Depardon, Lebanon, 1978
Harry Gruyaert, Tunisia, 1995
