THROUGH THE LENS OF KILIMANJARO - AN EMIRATI ARTIST'S DIALOGUE WITH NATURE

Dubai: At Lawrie Shabibi gallery in Alserkal Avenue, the towering presence of Mount Kilimanjaro comes alive, not through rock and snow, but through the soulful imagery of Emirati artist and designer Omar Al Gurg. His first solo exhibition, Everyman’s Mountain, running until 12th September, is more than a photographic showcase, it is a deeply personal narrative about transformation, humility, and humanity’s place in nature.

In 2021, Al Gurg set out to climb Africa’s highest peak. Armed with two Leica cameras, he spent four days ascending and two days descending the mountain. He returned not only with over 1,000 photographs, but with a profound shift in perspective. “When we summited the mountain, I was overwhelmed by immense feelings,” he reflects. “The most prominent one being that of feeling humbled and minuscule in the grand scheme of things.”

The exhibition distills this life-changing journey into 14 evocative photographs, each capturing the mountain’s shifting moods and surreal terrains, from the alpine desert plateau known as The Saddle, to the solitary Giant Groundsel rising from a charred landscape to a waterfall draped in moss that could be the opening scene of a fairy tale. His lens also turns toward the people of Kilimanjaro, the porters, the families, the mountain dwellers, who are quietly woven into the fabric of the mountain’s story.

“I didn’t expect to see a forest,” Al Gurg says. “I didn’t expect to see so many strange plants. It felt like someone had taken the silhouettes of ocean life and placed them on land. It was otherworldly.”

Al Gurg’s sensitivity to form and composition stems from his background in architecture and product design, where he heads his own practice, Modu Method. “In architecture, to represent your work, you compose an image to help people understand the building,” he explains. “Photography is very similar; you bring elements together to tell a story to the viewer.”

That connection between the organic and the constructed is a quiet undercurrent in Everyman’s Mountain. For Al Gurg, nature’s curves, structures, and patterns are inherently architectural. “Even though nature is fluid, it is also architectural,” he notes. “No matter how rigid you try to make architecture, there’s always a reference to nature, either in its incorporation or its absence.”

While some see photography as art without utility, Al Gurg believes otherwise. “These photos have a function; their function is to tell a story,”He says. “For me, it’s about giving meaning to the mountain and to the people who live from it and around it. For those who haven’t been there, it’s an opportunity to feel and to dream.”

In Everyman’s Mountain, Omar Al Gurg offers more than images, he offers a journey, one that reminds us of the beauty, fragility, and interconnectedness of our world. Through his lens, Kilimanjaro is not just a mountain. It is a cathedral, a living monument, and a mirror reflecting the small but meaningful place we each occupy in the vast architecture of nature.

Omar Al Gurg (b. 1995, UAE) is a Dubai-born artist whose photographic practice is shaped by a lifelong engagement with the medium. Raised in a family of photographers, Al Gurg began developing film and capturing images from an early age, cultivating a self-taught approach that privileges observation and attentiveness. His early subjects – nature and strangers encountered in daily life – reflect a quiet curiosity and sensitivity to the world around him. For Al Gurg, photography is a meditative practice, distinct from his background in design, yet both disciplines inform his creative outlook. His images are marked by a deliberate focus on detail and atmosphere, often pausing to document fleeting moments of light, resilience, and transformation within the landscape.