Monstrous Imaginings & Natural Nightmares
(Duration: three hours, one day, or one-day-and-one-night)
A photographers field-trip into the hidden corners, crannies and crevices of Wadi Rum.
A photographers field-trip into the hidden corners, crannies and crevices of Wadi Rum.
Wind and water weather the rocks into shapes that return in the half-lit world of our imaginations to taunt us and twist our memories and perceptions. Saleh (though not a photographer himself) knows many of the locations but there are many more waiting to be discovered; on rarely climbed hillsides, deep inside the siqs, and even at commonly visited sites, viewed from different angles. The light is everything, you need to start early and work late, when shadows are long and shafts of sunlight highlight humanoid features of an inaccessible facade no-one has identified before.
Below is a gigantic, monstrous, suspended human brain, a creature half horse - half human skeleton, a severed elephants foot . . . or what you will.
It is of course all in your head and your way of seeing things. The trick is to capture it and pass it on to the rest of us! How did the head of the Sphinx end up on a rock at the foot of Jebel Umm Adaami? And who are his ugly friends? Will you find them or will they find you?
