Akkasah is working on digitizing thousands of these promises through the use of state-of-the-art technology. Each collection in the archive is given painstaking attention. The photographs arrive in all manners of state, from prints of birthday parties organized in family albums to decaying negatives tossed in boxes left unopened for decades. Each photograph is digitized and catalogued with a mandate to be made available online for open access.
But perhaps it’s the cultural integrity that differentiates Akkasah. An Emirati student of Zamir’s mentioned in passing that his family were great photography hobbyists. Considering the importance and scarcity of photography in the UAE, Zamir visited the family with the intent of allowing him access to the treasure trove of images showing how Emiratis lived in the years before and after unification. The student’s father obliged after some convincing, but with one caveat:
“Only women staff are allowed to work with the images of women in the family, some of whom were photographed uncovered.” Although essentially cutting his staff by one-third for a majority of the photographs, Zamir was happy to agree. The photos were digitized, catalogued, rehoused, and returned to the family for safe keeping. The photos the family wanted to keep private were never published, everything else was – providing a rare glimpse at early life in the UAE.
“The minor details that photographs can reveal are significant: they show how people sat, how people gathered, how women and men looked in public. Architectural history is another thing. How did the city develop, for example? For many students who take Dubai or Abu Dhabi for granted, it is very hard to really imagine it,” he said.
Photography’s late inclusion in the story of humanity leaves millennia of questions unanswered. Fortunately, civilizations have had an obsession with documenting their existence. It might be a mundane, rudimentary exercise today, but the equivalent of a grocery store receipt in history has an invaluable impact on the understanding of our ancestors and the way they lived.
A number is worth a thousand words
Pointing at an Excel sheet with numbers organized in columns of commodities and wages, Global Distinguished Professor of Economic History and Social Science Robert Allen knows exactly how much the average laborer in Ancient Egypt was getting paid.
“And I know what they could have bought. One thing that would surprise you is that the typical laborer in Egypt from 250BC all the way to 1950 is at subsistence, no better than that. Since 1950, things have gone up, for several reasons but independence from colonial rule being the main one,” said Allen.