Atif AbuSamra
In the absence of a more coherent and businesslike approach, I am keeping my introduction free, allowing it to take whichever form it will, like a piece of alabaster in the hands and at the mercy of a sculptor. So here, I give you my alabaster.
I was born in Khartoum, Sudan – in the middle of the summer. If it was up to me, I would have chosen February. They say February in Sudan is the best time of year. I wouldn’t know. I never lived there. Shortly after I was born, I was taken to Belgrade, which was then still the capital of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. I was brought up there with all the advantages, disadvantages and freedoms that came with such a political system. Half way through my teenage years I accompanied my mother to London, where she was posted for work. There, I graduated from the University College with a first class degree in civil engineering and an award for the best overall design performance. Afterward, riding on a wave of my college successes, I spent years working as a maritime, bridge and as a high rise buildings structural engineer. But that wasn’t to be forever and, as a friend of mine once said, if you have the art bug, you can never get rid of it.
She was right.
In 2010, I abandoned my full time employment to follow my heart… now I work as a commercial photographer and I love it. My work includes a variety of photographs and digital images related to fashion, beauty, lifestyle, portraiture, architecture, urban spaces and aspects of life that surround me, or rather my perception thereof. Some of my commercial work you can see on this website; my personal photography I mostly keep in a separate place… I am grateful that, regardless of the years spent engineering structures, my need for a creative expression persisted throughout – that the art bug survived – and that now I’m free from the chains of an apparent certainty of a daily routine.
Having plunged headlong into the abyss of freelance photography, I feel that I am now finally me.