10/12/10

AMIRA AL SHARIF

click image to go to kickstarter

Amira Al Sharif is a photographer born in Saudi Arabia, living in Yemen, who is currently in New York to attend classes at ICP. Al Sharif is using the kickstarter website to raise money for a  year long project documenting American women in their twenty's.

Kickstarter is a site that allows projects to be proposed for private funding and donations can be as small as $1US. The target amount on this project is probably lower than would be ideal to make the project as much of a success as possible, so overshooting the target is sincerely hoped for.

The promise of a young, female, Yemeni photographer portraying young females in the US is appealing since so often, the citizens of this region are portrayed one dimensionally by US and western photographers. The hope is Al Sharif will be bold, and make images that enlighten, and that she won't be too concerned with feeling the project needs to be about brotherly (or sisterly) love. Sometimes the best photographs are ugly or shine a light on things the subjects sometimes would rather not be illuminated.

Al Sharif attended Stephanie Sinclair's class at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul recently so maybe because of that meeting, Sinclair will be available to guide and mentor Al Sharif. Now that would be more valuable than the kickstarter target by a long shot.

3 comments:

  1. Thank you for your support of Amira! She actually worked for me as a translator in Yemen earlier this year and I was totally impressed with her talent and determined spirit. She did attend my class at the Foundry Photo Workshop and I am indeed mentoring her now that she is in the US. You are right that she does need more funding, we just encouraged her to ask for the bare minimum since Kickstarter will only give over the money if it is fully funded. We are very excited about her future and are also very excited to see what she comes up with this year! - Stephanie

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  2. dearling,
    i wish you all the best. you deserve it. i'm your friend and i have no a single doubt that you can make it.i have just made a research about you on google .what a very long way you have passed to get there? and i'm sure that you will go ahead.you have been and you are and you will be alwayes ( a fighter ) to me

    Elham

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  3. Sorry but we accidentally deleted a comment from 'tapa'. Please resend.

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