Inner focus

Jassim Rabia Al Awadhi, lecturer, College of Fine Arts and Design, University of Sharjah.

I feel that photography, like art, has to come from within and one should always look at subjects and scenes with that eye.

I was born in Deira in my family home, which used to be in the area behind the present Emirates Bank building. The house had a windtower and I loved being in it.

When I was about 6, I went to Maha'd Dini, a nearby religious school. All our instructors were UAE nationals and they taught us Arabic, maths and the Holy Quran and I consider their contribution to my life invaluable.

I lost my father at the age of 2 and my mother brought us up - all eight of us! As the youngest, I was very attached to her. In the sixth grade, I was shifted to Al Hamdiya School and then on to Dubai High School.

Even though I was younger, I was put in school along with my immediate elder brother, Dawood. So we studied together, graduated and then joined Dubai Police as cadet officers.

We wanted to join Dubai Police because they were planning to set up a crime lab and wanted six cadet officers to be given full scholarships to study criminology and other science subjects in the US.

(I qualified for this and) majored in photography (including forensic photography) at the University of Dayton in Ohio and graduated in 1985.

I was one of the earliest UAE national
graduates …
… in photography to come back to the country to work in that field. After returning from the US, I trained for a year at the Police Academy and graduated as an officer. Soon after, I started as a crime photographer.

I vividly remember my first case - it was a homicide. It was in an apartment in Baniyas Square and the victim had been brutally murdered. It was a challenge for me to capture the images without emotion and be calm and professional.

My images had to be precise, clear and sharp to give detailed information about the crime scene. Since it was a rare case and the Crime Lab had just started, all senior officers were present.

I struggled to keep them out of the pictures I took of the scene - especially because I, a junior officer, had to tell them to move aside. Later I was promoted to expert photographer and then became head of the Department of Photography.

Dubai Police established more technical divisions, including finger printing, in the Crime Lab and soon I was made director of the Crime Scene Technical Division.

In 1999, I took my master's degree in photography from Nottingham Trent University in the UK and in 2000, I won the Dubai Excellency Award as field managing officer.

By 2002, I had had enough of crime scenes …
… and wanted to dedicate myself to artistic photography. I retired from Dubai Police in 2003. I then joined the College of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Sharjah first as part-time lecturer and later became full-time lecturer in photography.

It is very rare for a person who has retired from the Police Department to choose an academic profession like I have. But I find it very rewarding. I teach students, who are open-minded and eager to learn. Some of my students' works have been exhibited here as well as in galleries in Europe.

My interest in photography started early in life. My uncle Abdullah Khamber was one of the first UAE nationals to bring a camera from India to the UAE and set up a studio in Dubai called Dubai Art Studio.

As a boy, I had seen him taking photographs for making a passport-like permit paper with the image of the holder to allow him or her to cross borders between emirates.

He also travelled a lot and brought back photos of those places. Then my brother Faisal went to the UK to study engineering and brought back a camera, which again exposed me to the wonders of photography.

But it was only when I started studying it as a major subject that it became a big part of my life and continues to be so.

Many photographers have influenced my work. Among them are Alfred Stieglitz, famous American photographer, editor, and art gallery director, who urged the recognition of photography as an art and Yousuf Karsh, portrait photographer.

Photography is still not considered an art in this part of the world, it is just a profession for practical purposes. Most people tend to look at photos technically without looking into the emotion or the artistic sense behind it.

That is the challenge that passionate photography aficionados like me have to face. It took Alfred Stieglitz about 30 years to convince Americans to think that photography can be an art.

So it might take time here, but it is achievable. We need more colleges to have art as a subject. What concerns me is that art is not given much importance in schools. Even with several galleries in the UAE and schools for design and art, students are not much exposed to art.

We should have a cultural revolution here to promote appreciation of good art, including photographs, and to preserve our rich heritage and tradition by supporting the execution of art and craft and ancient skills in a modern way.

I am glad that with the coming of digital photography …
… more people are taking pictures. What people like me should do is to teach them the visual concept and the appreciation of good art through photography.

I am planning to complete my PhD in photography by 2009, preferably from a university in an Arab country - such as Egypt, which is rich in great heritage and ancient art. I hope my research work will add value not only to this college but also to the country.