Lest you forget, life of Emiratis chronicled in Warehouse 421

abu dhabi - Emirati family photographs from 1950 to 1999, along with the stories behind those photographs are featured at an exhibition in Abu Dhabi

Warehouse 421 is just that: number 421 warehouse in the Mina Zayed, the old port of Abu Dhabi. A life-size cast iron boat sculpture in front of the carefully renovated warehouse give away its newly found purpose: an art gallery.
Taken over by Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation and opened as an art space in November 2015, Warehouse 421 was especially created to host an exhibition that was born out of a book, which was a university project of several Emirati girls from Zayed University.
The exhibition titled 'Lest We Forget' started five years ago as a project to gather Emirati family photographs from 1950 to 1999 and along with the stories behind those photographs, to create a photo album book.
When she heard about it, Shaikha Salama liked the project so much that she took it under her foundation to turn it into a national archive that documents Emirati social history. She also asked Dr. Michele Bambling, the Zayed University professor overseeing her students' project, to take over the project.
"When the idea was put forward five years ago, it didn't work. The girls were too shy to bring old family photos and share them. Until one day one of the girls brought in this really old family album and said 'look what I found at home'! The album was titled Lest We Forget: Shaikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan's Trip to Africa, 1974," said Dr. Bambling, now the creative director of Lest We Forget.
Her student who brought the royal family album to class turned out to be Shaikha Mariam bint Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the daughter of Shaikh Sultan bin Zayed.
With the blessings of her family, she shared lots of old family photos with her classmates, much to their amazement. It was also a turning point, as from that moment on, all the students' grandparents gave them entire boxes of old family photos to use for their university project.
Several of Shaikha Mariam's photos were chosen for the book, three of which depict Shaikh Zayed with his family, enjoying holiday or home life.
Other photos show family trips to the desert, where they used to set up tents and camp for the whole winter, portraits of children, some wearing gold necklace bibs, family holidays abroad, including a 1978 photo of a young Emirati man and his friends from Oman and Yemen posing while sightseeing in Bucharest, Romania, with their Afro hairstyle, which was popular among young Gulf men in those days.
There are Polaroid photos, black and white ones, sepia and even hand coloured photographs. The oldest photograph found that is one part of the book and the exhibition is from the 1950s, a black and white baby photo of the President, His Highness Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, contributed by his granddaughter, Shaikha bint Khalifa bin Saif Al Nahyan.
"We have very few photographs from the 1950s and 1960s, as not many Emiratis could afford cameras, but this changed from the 1970s, with oil revenues," said Dr. Bambling.
"Together with the students, we decided to cut the final date to 1999 as from this year on students start having memories of the past," she added.
 Eventually, the project grew to involve 100 students, who contributed over 150 photographs for the book. Each photo is accompanied by a small description or statement, written on old typewriters in both Arabic and English by the student who contributed the photo.
 All of these photographs are also part of the Lest We Forget exhibition, in one way or another. Some are just copies displayed randomly on a long table in one room of the exhibition, others are part of fun, interactive digital displays.
 "Here, on this circular table, you can pick one card and drop it on the screen next to it; for example, this card saying 1950, when you place it on the digital screen it will show all the photos we have from the 1950s, then you can touch each individual one and it will give you the information about that photo," explained Dr. Bambling.
"Or this card saying Ajman. Oh, see, it shows no photos, which means no one from Ajman has come forward with old family pictures," she pointed out.
 Lest We Forget, which have started with 100 contributing students, is encouraging anyone with old family photos, stories or artifacts to come to Warehouse 421, where they can record in a specially set up studio their objects or stories, which will eventually end up as a pubic national archive of Emirati social history.
 Lest We Forget book is available at the gallery for Dh400 and the exhibition will run here until June 18.
 silvia@khaleejtimes.com

• UAE
• Abu Dhabi