RIYADH, 14 May — The historic Dirayyah in Riyadh, Jeddah’s old city and the mystery of the desert are the main themes of the photographic exhibition "Pixels from Saudi Arabia", which opened here at Al-Khozama Center last Friday.
Inaugurated by Kryzysztof Plominski, the Polish ambassador, and Hussein Ali Hatata, Al-Khozama’s manager, the exhibition displays 30 photographs by Jacek Pienkowski, a Polish-Canadian photographer who spent three years in the Kingdom and in that time captured especially the breathtaking beauty of the desert.
"I made this final selection from more than 1,000 photographs," Pienkowski said, explaining that at different times of the day the sand dunes assume different colors, tempting him to repeatedly return and photograph them.
Pienkowski, whose photograph "Morning in Jeddah" bagged People’s Choice Award during Desert Energy Art Exhibition at the Canadian Embassy in Riyadh last May, shot all these classics with Pentax 645N and used an Epson 2450 photo scanner for the negatives.
The results were digitally mastered and the final pictures printed in exclusive pigment archival inks on special matt paper.
"All displayed prints are guaranteed to last at least 100 years," Pienkowski noted.
The exhibition, which continues until Thursday, is a study of Saudi Arabia of the past and its landscape. Of the six prints on Dirayyah, three depict the ornate wooden doors essentially of Najdi heritage while, in contrast, the multicultural flair of Old Jeddah’s streets and houses is evident in another group of six pictures.
There are 10 photographs of red sand dunes captured at different periods of the day. Three snapshots of camels, including one entitled "Camel Souq", make an interesting study of the nomadic life.
A staff photojournalist for various magazines in Poland in the late 1970s, Pienkowski emigrated to Canada in 1989, and joined his wife — a microbiologist at King Faisal Specialist Hospital — in Riyadh three years ago.
Referring to the exhibition, he noted, "This is an expression of our gratitude to the country we are about to leave."
