Akkasah: Center for Photography

Akkasah aims to establish a photographic collection at NYU Abu Dhabi drawn from the Arab world and with a special focus on histories of the UAE. Photography has an especially important role to play in recording the rapid transformation and social diversity of the UAE. There are many collections of photographs, private and corporate, Emirati and non-Emirati, that provide invaluable insights into the UAE’s past. Akkasah will seek to preserve such collections (in either digital or analog form), create for them narrative contexts based on oral interviews and historical research, and make them available via a website for scholarly and general consultation. Akkasah also intends to commission new work. The archive is governed by the scholarly and ethical codes that define the educational mission of the University; the advanced technical resources and professional expertise of both New York University and New York University Abu Dhabi are at the disposal of the archive.

A Few Details for Contributors

Akkasah will provide managed digital storage — that is, digital storage in perpetuity with forward-migration for files once their original formats become obsolete — as well as state-of-the-art physical preservation for negatives or prints in the collection.

Contributors may submit their photos for high quality scanning after which the photos will be returned or they may give the photos to the archive permanently. In either case, a copy of the scanned image for each photo will be provided to the contributor.

To make the collection useful, descriptive information about the photos (either individually or in groups) will be necessary. Contributors may provide this information themselves or work with a staff member, effectively dictating the information.

The photos will be presented as separate collections, each with its own name and details about its origin. All of the collections will be aggregated in the main website for the Archive and will be accessible to the public.

Should a contributor want to provide photos to be made available publicly only at a later date, the possibility could be discussed with the Project Director.

Intellectual property rights for the photos will remain with the photographer unless specific arrangements are made to transfer the rights to NYU Abu Dhabi. The use of the photos will be governed by a memorandum of agreement composed for each collection.

Akkasah plans to host a conference or a smaller colloquium of international scholars each year. These gatherings are intended to encourage and develop new scholarly research. They will address topics either directly related or of broad relevance to photography in the Arab world. The organizers of each conference or colloquium will seek publication for a selection of the papers presented.

Occasional exhibitions of both historical and contemporary works will be held at New York University Abu Dhabi’s public gallery at the University’s new campus on Saadiyat Island.

Contemporary photographers from the region and from further afield will be invited to conduct workshops or to take up an artist residency and to interact with both the students at NYU Abu Dhabi and also with the broader public.