colour scheme
Contributors to the Exhibition
The photographs in this exhibition are drawn from eight collections in Bahrain and Devon.
A third of the exhibition comes from the Bahrain National Museum, Bahrain Petroleum Company, and Ali Akbar Bushiri Archive and Falcon Cinefoto (Khalifa Shaheen Archive), and illustrate Bahrain's dramatic transformation from the 1930s to the 1970s.
The remaining photographs are taken by members of the IAIS and the former Director of Exeter Maritime Museum, Major David Goddard who skilfully developed black and white photographs of Arabian boats, particularly the pearl-diving and trading dhows (large wooden boats, iconic of the Gulf coastline) in the 1960s and 1990s.
Chair of Arabic and Islamic Material Culture, Professor Dionisius Agius photographed dhows in the Arabian Gulf during his research into the Maritime Culture of the region between 1990 and 2000. He said of the photographs, ‘Sadly, some of the dhows like the Omani badan and Ghanja have since disappeared and these photographs are an important record of a once thriving maritime culture. It is a poignant record of a way of life which has largely disappeared and this exhibition will hopefully stimulate greater interest in the folklore and cultural heritage of this fascinating part of the world.'
Glencairn Balfour-Paul, an IAIS Honorary Research Fellow took the opportunity to capture images of life in Dubai in the sixties where he served as Britain's Political Agent and later as Ambassador in Iraq, Jordan and Tunisia. He had access to the ruling families enabling him to photograph the Ruler of Dubai, Shaikh Rashid bin Sa'id Al-Maktoum as well as generate pictures of everyday life in the region. It was also fortunate that Balfour-Paul took pictures of the Iraq marshes that are now much reduced by the draining of the area during Saddam Hussein's reign.
His wife, Dr Jenny Balfour-Paul also an IAIS Honorary Research Fellow collated images from her research into indigo dye from her time living and working in the Middle East and subsequent fieldwork in many Arab countries. An image taken in the early eighties of the last indigo dyer in Oman whose craft was in decline, reflects the changes in the landscape of the Gulf, she said ‘People who lived in the Gulf during the 1960's will now find the area totally unrecognisable. There used to be lots of deserts, low level buildings and palaces. However, once oil was discovered the landscape completely changed with new high-rise apartments and so our photographs appear really historic.'
Many of the photographs on display recorded life before the transformation generated by the impact of oil wealth in the region. University Fellow and former lecturer in Arabic Mr Leslie McLoughlin and his wife also illustrate in their photographs what used to be the Trucial States, now the United Arab Emirates and the former Western Aden Protectorate, now the Yemen Arab Republic. There is a 1964 photo of Leslie in the officer uniform of the Trucial Oman Scouts, a type of uniform that is now preserved in one of the museums established by the Ruler of Sharjah.
A later photo from 1980 is a colour photograph of Mr McLoughlin and shows him standing in front of an ancient fort at the Omani settlement of Boshar just outside Muscat, he said, ‘At that time my wife used to join the many other lady artists who flocked to paint and draw at Boshar because it had everything: a warm welcome from the Omanis, a mosque, palm trees, traditional houses, a fort ,plenty of sand and sand-coloured rock, and a water system based on the Persian "falaj". Now, Boshar is barely visible as it is entirely surrounded by expressways and even has a floodlit football stadium.'
