By including himself in the scene, where he appears both motionless and in movement, Al-Ghoussein adopts an engaged position which suggests a new relation to the environment, a new way of being in the world. This barely perceptible but significant detail shifts our perspective to reveal the basic architecture of place (both geographical and photographic) as time becomes frozen in an opposition between structure and space.

“I was born in Kuwait but we went to live in the United States soon after. We then moved to Japan when I was nine years old and returned to Kuwait for high school. I first studied biology, before taking a photography course into my fourth year at New York University. I fell in love with it and ended up double majoring in biology and fine arts. After my studies, I traveled to India for a year and a half to write, read, and take some photographs. I later started to put together a portfolio in the United Kingdom, to apply to a graduate school in the US. After graduate school, I took a three-years break in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt to be a diving instructor. One day I missed the art world and found a job opening at the American University of Dubai. When I arrived in the United Arab Emirates, I was picked up by my cousin who took me to the American University of Sharjah by accident. It was just opening so I left my CV there and ended up working at the American University of Sharjah. It was a brand new institution and I was really looking forward to the idea of writing a curriculum and designing spaces. The country has changed so much since I arrived in 1997, I have seen it transform immensely. I moved to Abu Dhabi around 2013 to become professor of visual arts at New York University (NYUAD), partly because in 2010, I was commissioned by the Guggenheim museum to do a series of images on Saadiyat island.

Around 2015, I read an article in The National saying that Abu Dhabi municipality was in the process of naming and mapping the 214 islands of the Emirate. That mesmerized me somehow. I was shocked that I have been living in Abu Dhabi for about nine years, and I had no idea that it was part of such a large archipelago. This fascination became an obsession to document or visit as many of these islands as possible. The research process is difficult, there is very little information written about the islands and even getting a full list of names has been complicated. Until now I have photographed about 40 of them. I know I am not going to photograph the 214 islands, because some of them are military, commercial or private, but knowing how many I can get to, the obsession and insistence of trying to get access to as many as possible, and the difficulties in getting this access, are part of the project. It makes me think of the novel by Franz Kafka, The Castle (1926), where in the majority of the book the protagonist is trying to reach the castle. This journey of trying to get to it is a major part of the project.

I rarely had a picture in mind before I visited one of the islands, I usually respond to what I am seeing. Most of the time it demands going a few times. I also have a few images where I am standing on a beacon in the middle of the sea, and when I plan to show the whole series into one exhibition, I will use them as a kind of marker throughout the show. I have been taking short video clips from certain islands as well, and I have collected some objects, but I do not want to be too scientific about that. My goal is not to be in all of the photographs, because sometimes I feel like the image does not need me in there, and I want to avoid the superficial reading of “Where's Waldo?”. It is myself in a space, in my relation to a space, how I affect the space and how the space affects me.”

Interview with Tarek Al-Ghoussein, 20 December 2021, Abu Dhabi