Sometimes it is a photo from behind the scenes that is the most memorable. Taken in 1970, in the mountains of Lebanon, it captures a playful side of the late Sheikh Zayed as he and the late Sheikh Mubarak give photographer Noor Ali Rashid a taste of snow.
It was one of the few times Rashid found himself on the other side of the lens.
First recognised as an official photographer by the British in 1959, Rashid built a reputation as the royal or sheikhs’ photographer. He was there for every milestone in the UAE’s history, capturing the ordinary and the extraordinary.
His photojournalism is illustrated by his coverage of a tragic accident in April 1968, when a dhow carrying 500 pilgrims home to Pakistan from Mecca after Haj hit a sandbank near Dubai harbour. It caught fire and sank, killing 200 people.
His documentary and historic images, along with his more artistic side, including images only now made public, can be seen at Lasting Impressions, an annual exhibition at Sharjah Art Museum to recognise the significant contributions of artists who have changed the face of contemporary art.
“One of the things I hope this exhibition of my father’s work illustrates is that he was more than just a royal photographer,” says Shamsa Noor Ali Rashid, who chairs the Noor Ali Rashid Archives and is guest curator of the exhibition.
“I wanted to demystify that image, and show his artistic and personal touches in every photo, where often you can see his sense of humour and how each photo has multiple stories. The longer you look, the more stories a single image tells you.”
This year is the fifth exhibition in the series and serves as a retrospective of Noor Ali Rashid (1929-2010), who is considered the father of photojournalism and street photography in the UAE and served as royal photographer at the invitation of the late Sheikh Zayed.
“My father left behind more than a million photographs and images and our family has formed the Noor Ali Rashid Archives as a way to accumulate, preserve, catalogue and present the legacy of images that so adeptly captured the formative years of our nation in the faces of everyone from the man fishing in the creek to Sheikh Zayed himself,” said Ms Rashid.
On display until December 6 are 238 images, selected from 350,000 photos that have been digitised so far. Both black and white and colour, they are divided into different themes, such as “portrait of a life”, a compilation of Noor Ali Rashid’s earliest and largest known bodies of street photography from the 1940s to the 1970s that include souqs, life on water, architecture, travellers, crafts, animals, celebrations and children’s toys.
Next is Building the Nation, delving deep into the photographer's encounter with the developing story of the UAE and the encounter with Sheikh Zayed that resulted in him becoming royal photographer.
Visually, this part of the exhibition comes to life with sections on historic firsts: the pre-federation Trucial states, official portraits of the nation's fathers and their sons who are now Rulers, and a series titled Whispers that includes endearing, informal portraits of the leaders communicating in friendship.
This section has the first images captured by Rashid as he arrived in Dubai in 1958 to set up a business. Days after his arrival, Sheikh Saeed bin Hasher Al Maktoum, then ruler of Dubai, passed away. It was announced that a public accession ceremony of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum would take place on October 4 and Rashid headed there to capture the events as they unfolded, including a historic black and white photo of a young Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid, later Ruler of Dubai, delivering his first speech, standing in a bisht, speaking into a microphone.
"The third portion of the exhibition, titled Traveling the World brings the public never -viewed photographs of my father's travels to more than 35 countries, from the coronation of the shah of Iran to a candid portrait of the American starl Ava Gardner on a 1950s trip to Karachi, Pakistan," said Ms Rashid.
Other prominent figures photographed include US first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth, boxer Muhammed Ali, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and legendary Egyptian singers Um Kalthum and Abdul Halim Hafez.
One of Ms Rashid’s favourite photos was taken in the 1960s in Dubai, of four falcons sitting on the boot of a Mercedes car, hooded for a flight to Pakistan for hunting.
“I simply love this photo. There is everything in it, from humour to a slice of life to a touch of art and creativity,” she said with a smile. “You can even see the plane, a PIA flight, in the background.”
As one of the first photographers in Middle East to insist on a byline and credit, Rashid was also a social documentary photographer.
An image taken of a Cairo street in the 1960s captures the pan-Arab sentiments of the time. Over a vegetable store hangs the portrait of pan-Arab leader Gamal Abdul Nasser while on a nearby wall are posters of Hafez Al Assad of Syria, Numairi of Sudan, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi and Sheikh Zayed.
In other photos, you see how in the UAE in those days bullets were used as weights for market scales, and hardworking delivery men were hauling loads on their backs alongside donkeys carrying water and baskets of fish.
Another photo shows one of the first western doctors, Desmond Macauley, sitting at an open air table vaccinating a crowd. Along with the weary looking adults, a child is watching and pulls up his sleeve in excitement unaware of what is to come.
“My father took photos out of compassion and to document what was happening around him, rather than at the assignment of a news agency or out of financial ambition. For this reason, every image he shot was of equal importance,” said Mrs Rashid.
The exhibition includes quotes by the photographer, including this: “My pictures may represent history but they are not dead. They have life, action, colour and emotion.”
The free exhibition tells the story of the nation’s formative years, cultural practices, everyday life, and historical firsts, one image at a time.
“This is the first time that an exhibition attempts to ambitiously present a comprehensive retrospective of six decades of photography, shedding light on his lifelong passion for capturing both the ordinary and the extraordinary and his non-commercial commitment to a practice that was entirely self-taught,” said Mrs Rashid.
The display includes the biography of Rashid from his birth in Gwadar – which then belonged to Oman but is now part of Pakistan – in December 1929 to his death on August 18, 2010. He never stopped taking photos, using his new digital camera 18 hours before he died.
“I am so honoured to see my father’s work exhibited in this way and I believe that he would feel great pride and satisfaction to know that his work has been preserved and has meaning to so many visitors from all over the world,” said his daughter.
rghazal@thenational.ae