Saud was born in Saudi Arabia in 1978 and now splits her time between New York and Jeddah. As an undergraduate, she studied film theory at Wellesley College and went on to receive her Master of Fine Arts in 2004 from the School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her images all include close-up shots or portraits of people, but the faces are completely blank and unrecognizable. Al-Saud has developed a distinctive style, and once you have seen one of her photographs, you will immediately recognize her work the next time you see it. Many readers may recall the days when censorship in Saudi Arabia was very strict and just about every imported magazine and newspaper had been violated by the censors' ominous black pens before they hit the newsstands. This applied to words as well as images, but it was the pictures of women that were main targets of the black pens: sleeves and skirts that were too short were made longer; blouses and dresses that showed a little too much flesh from below the neck were furiously blacked out, and frequently, entire pages were ripped out. It was these stringent laws of visual censorship that inspired Al-Saud in her work. Al-Saud is very private and reluctant to be interviewed, but she did take time to answer some questions by email. “I take a camera with me everywhere I go,” she said. “I'm constantly snapping pictures of the people around me, usually in casual day-to-day settings. None of them are staged.They are little fleeting vignettes that, I feel, are quite ubiquitous in most people's lives. The snapshots I choose to make drawings from tend to be intimate, familiar moments,” she wrote. To shoot these “originals”, Al Saud uses whichever camera she happens to have with her on that day, usually shooting in color. “Sometimes it is a digital Leica, sometimes a film camera such as a 6x7 Pentax or a Holga. I usually use 120 film, and don't really work with 35mm anymore. For these initial images, I usually use whatever light is available, or a small flash. ” Al-Saud then photographs a suitable background, using one of two large format cameras which will give her a negative that is either 4x5 inches, or 8x10 inches. These hefty contraptions of yesteryear have to be mounted on a tripod and, when setting the shot up, Al-Saud disappears behind the camera with a large black cloth over her head, just like the Victorian photographers. Her photographs are shot using either natural light, or studio strobes, or a combination of both. Al-Saud also incorporates small items of every day life to add some warmth. “The elements I incorporate into the ‘backgrounds' are all familiar, almost nostalgic items that we see disappearing along with film in this new digital era. The envelopes and stamps are mostly from letters I have received. The cardboard, envelopes, fabric etc., are all interesting textures, colors and patterns. Due to the nature of the drawings, the final photos are quite graphic and they become too flat without the introduction of these warm elements. They are mostly playful things that I've had around my whole life – they've already become evocative relics – but are still accessible and welcoming.” Finding places to process these now unusual negatives can be a problem, and if she is mailing them to a lab, there is always the risk that a customs officer may open the package and expose the undeveloped film to light, thereby ruining it. “There are no labs in Saudi that can process or print sheet film anymore,” explained Al Saud. “They all stopped back in 2006 so I have to ship my work to a lab elsewhere. I tried a lab in Dubai, then one in India, then finally went back to my favorite lab in the US. Shipping undeveloped film is a tricky thing, especially because sheet film is not common, so people assume it's ok to open the box – even when I write all over it that it isn't! So I've had some unpleasant incidents with that, and with x-rays, which can also damage undeveloped film. There's no way for me to know at what point the boxes got opened though, I just know that the film has been exposed.” The next stage of the process is something she learned by accident. “When I was in grad school, I accidentally scratched one of my 4x5 negatives in the darkroom one day. So I decided to find a sharp, fine etching tool and play with it while waiting to print my photos (our darkroom at school was always busy). At the end of the day, I decided to print it just out of curiosity and ‘voila!' I liked the result so I started experimenting until I got a grasp on how to manipulate the negatives to my liking.” Once her negatives are processed, Al-Saud selects one of her ‘people pictures', and painstakingly etches a graphic version onto the negative: “I start scratching away at the negative emulsion, using fine tipped engravers and dental tools. The black graphic outlines of the final photo are the result of the emulsion I've scratched from the negatives' surface by hand. The easiest way to explain it is that I make a stencil, but instead of ink coming through, it is light that fills in and blackens the lines.” The final stage is for a large print to be made, ranging from size 20x24 inches, to 50x6 inches. “They are printed on photographic color paper in a traditional darkroom. I used to print them myself when I had access to a darkroom but now I deal with a lab. Because computer screens vary so much in color and brightness, scanning a photo and sending it for color correction is not an option. I have to ship actual prints back and forth until we get it right,” explained Al-Saud. “They mail me three or four variations, based on my instructions, and I then tell them which I prefer and what changes I need made. Eventually, they send me a final version. We then throw out all the variations and match all future prints to this photo.” Al-Saud is dedicated to her work and is in her studio for about eight hours a day. The final effect is something that the average viewer would assume is done on Photoshop, so why does Al-Saud go to such lengths to use complex, traditional methods? “First of all, I am a creature of habit and I love film. But more importantly, I'm just trying to point out how easy it is to manipulate a photograph even without Photoshop or its equivalents.” Despite the faces in her pictures being blank, her people are very much alive and there is a universality about them. Instead of being strangers, which they would be if they had faces, they become people that we know – or even ourselves. There is something very strong about the body language of the figures that gives us clues as to what the expressions on the faces might have been, but we are allowed to use our own imaginations to decide on this. The young women in the photographs may be Saudi, but there are no veils or other ethnic signifiers to tell us that they are. They are very different to the stereotypical image of Arab women pervasive in the West and, without their faces present, Al-Saud succeeds in portraying Saudi women as relatable, dynamic, and self-possessed. Al-Saud's exhibition “Your Friends and Neighbors” runs at the Athr Gallery from April 12-28. For more details see www.athrart.com
