The Blueness of the Shadow

زرقة الظل

Blueness of the Shadow   زرقة الظل :      

I have worked in some projects in a collaboration with other artists, the poet Qassim Haddad and the  musician Mohammed Haddad. The first project was exhibited in 2011 at Al Rewaq Art space in Bahrain and a photography book was published by Oriental Press with the title “Blueness of the Shadow زرقة الظل” that was part of the project “Tarafa Ibin Al Warda طرفة بن الوردة” . The work was accompanied by poetry recital and manuscript for the poet .A Music album that was composed for this project by the composer Mohammed Haddad, which  was titled  Tarafa طرفة.

     The project started in 2008 it was a tribute and the record of an ongoing conversation between Haddad and the pre-Islamic poet (Tarafah Ibn Al-‘Abd), who lived where it was called Bahrain, the same name of the now a days  home-country of the poet Qassim  Haddad a small island in the Gulf. The poet Tarafa went through unique circumstances throughout the period of his short life (543 to 569), during which he faced many of injustice, especially from his uncles who harmed and denied him... despite all that, he lived free in spite, rebel, and was against the kings until he was confronted by the king of Al-Heera (Amr Ibn Hind) that had him killed before he’s thirty...

In this first project Blueness of the Shadow, I was documenting the Poet Qassim Haddad while calligraphing the poems of his work ( Tarafa Ibn Al Wardah). The setting was the poet's room (workshop) in the writer's habitat where he was actually creating his work, and to reflect the real atmosphere of the place I was simply using his desk light without any added lighting, with his things scattered on his table,  all over the place, his papers, pens, colors, ink, magnifier, books, and the shadows of his poems transforming the place into a magical universe ...