Souvenirs from Halwan
SOUVENIRS FROM HALWAN
Stylist and Creative Direction: Alia Aluli
Photographer: Zeinab Batchelor
Photography Assistant: Emily Clarke
MUA: Umber Ghauri
Hair: Russie Miessi
Set Design: Bernice Mulenga
Models:
Chiara Mottironi
Riyam Salim
Delilah Holliday
Above: Chiara Wears full set by Atlier Mundane (@ateliermundane), Hat Vintage Dior from La Vie En Fauve (@lavieenfauve), Boots by Jeffery Campbell
Below: Riyam wears Hat from Pebble London, top by Ahmed Serour (@ahmedwsorour), boots vintage Dior from La Vie En Fauve (@lavieenfauve)
Delilah Holliday wears hat and veil and gloves by Ahmed Serour (@ahmedwsorour), dress by MOTHERWOMB by Savanah Avery (@motherwomb)
Below: Riyam wears dress by Erika Maish ( @erika_maish), Delilah Holliday wears hat and veil by Ahmed Serour (@ahmedwsorour)
Words by Alia Aluli
Through this photo series I wanted to pay homage to imagined places of origin, drawing references from Spaghetti Westerns, old Arabic magazines, and my grandmothers living room. This shoot follows three characters expressing their understanding of their own heritage through fragmented reinterpretations of their heritage.
The re-imagination of the Wild West is an aesthetic and imagined world that has always strangely resonated with me growing up. I wanted to honour the films that depicted the open road, to the narration attributed to misfits, and those who teeter outside societal structures and binaries. Growing up in-between two cultures I constantly felt like an outsider; slightly edging between imagined boarders, not knowing how to attribute my identity in a simplified way.
Being part of a second generation of migrants, the culture of my heritage became an imagined and nostalgic space, rather than a physical or tangible reality. It is a world that is distant physically, and yet retained through familial expectations and stories that hark back to a place of origin.
The imagination of the Cowboy, to me, denoted an unexplainable imagined nostalgia that resonated with my idea of the Middle East- of the desert, and the nomadic history I grew up listening to. Films about the open road also became metaphoric of the physical displacement of my place of heritage.