Documentary · 2026
The Sadu Weavers
Ten days in February with eight weavers in and around Al Ain, for a collective telling its own story for the first time.
The commission
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Client
Ghazal Weavers’ Collective
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Year and place
2026, Al Ain, Abu Dhabi
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The brief
Portraits and working pictures of eight weavers for a 64-page book, a website and a touring exhibition.
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What was delivered
72 edited photographs, 16 exhibition prints at 50 × 70 cm, and a signed print for every weaver.
The story
The weavers of the Ghazal collective work at home, in courtyards and majlis rooms around Al Ain, on ground looms staked out the way their mothers set them. Al Sadu, the Bedouin weaving of red, black and white wool, is on UNESCO’s list of intangible heritage, and the collective wanted pictures for a small book and a touring exhibition, made with the weavers rather than of them.
I spent ten days in Al Ain in February, which meant long drives between villages, a lot of gahwa and dates, and asking before every single picture. Each weaver chose where she wanted to be photographed and what she wanted to show: Moza her hands on the warp, Hessa the doorway of her old room at the edge of the oasis, Shamsa the shelves of yarn she spins and dyes herself.
Several of the women preferred not to show their faces, and that shaped the book as much as anything: hands, tools, rooms and light. Most of the pictures were made in the shade of a doorway in the last hour of the afternoon. Every weaver received a signed print of her own portrait before anything was published.
From the shoot
Tap any photograph to see it larger.
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Forty years of weaving, Al Hili -
The view she chose instead of a portrait -
Two hours for a single new pattern
- days in Al Ain
- 10
- weavers photographed
- 8
- pages in the book
- 64
Forty years at the loom and nobody had ever photographed my hands like that. She sent every weaver a print.
More work
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