Lasting Impressions: UAE’s “Royal Photographer” at Sharjah Art Museum

Noor Ali Rashid, also known as UAE’s “Royal Photographer” passed away four years ago, yet his legacy lives on through his timeless works. Starting this week, Sharjah Art Museum will host an exhibition focusing on the first half of Rashid’s career from the late 1940s to the 1970s. Celebrated as the father of photojournalism in the region, Noor Ali Rashid (1929 -2010) amassed a collection of over a million images during his six decades of capturing the ordinary moments and the extraordinary events in the history of the region. The exhibition will run from October 22 until December 6 and will showcase 200 selected photographs by the late photographer. In his esteemed role as “Royal Photographer”, he created iconic portraits of the UAE’s leaders and his pictures were, and continue to be, a means of glimpsing into the early development of the Emirates. Not only did he turn his lens to patterns of every day life in the region – life in the desert, school boys in the 1960s, bustling souqs of the 1970s – he also captured powerful images from his travels to over 35 countries around the world.

Capturing snapshots of history and teaching the world through art – now that’s #barakability! Have you been to the exhibition? Tell us what you think!