Documentary · 2024
Wood and Water
A year with the apprentices restoring a wooden hoori in a dhow yard on Dubai Creek, from the first plank to the launch.
The commission
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Client
Al Jaddaf Boatbuilding Trust
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Year and place
2024, Al Jaddaf, Dubai Creek
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The brief
A monthly visit over twelve months to record one restoration, the apprentices and the launch.
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What was delivered
Twelve monthly sets for social media, 60 final photographs for the website and funder reports, and a launch-night set the same week.
The story
The Al Jaddaf Boatbuilding Trust teaches young Emiratis and Dubai residents traditional boatbuilding in a yard on Dubai Creek, a few hundred metres from where dhows have been built by hand for generations. Its master builders learned their trade in the yards of Ajman and Beypore, and they teach the apprentices to shape teak by eye. The trust needed a record of one full restoration to show funders, and pictures its apprentices would be proud of.
I visited one day a month for a year. That rhythm meant I could follow the boat as it changed, and the apprentices got used to me showing up with a camera and a box of luqaimat. Some of my favourite pictures are of the slow parts: steaming a plank so it will bend, or waiting for the shark oil to soak into the hull.
The year ended on a cool evening in December with the hoori going down the slipway into the Creek, half the apprentices’ families on the bank and the trust’s yard manager in the water up to his knees.
From the shoot
Tap any photograph to see it larger.
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Month three, the new keel -
Month six, planking up -
Freya, second-year apprentice -
December, the hoori on the Creek
- monthly visits
- 12
- apprentices
- 9
- final photographs
- 60
A clear quote, on time, no fuss in the yard, and the apprentices loved her. The launch photos are on the wall of the yard office.
More work
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