Everyone knows what Dubai looks like: glass, sun, a skyline against a cloudless sky. Almost no one knows that for a few mornings each winter the city disappears. A sea of fog fills the streets, and only the tallest towers remain, floating above it like islands. This is the Dubai that photographer and videographer Asif Ali Yousafzai, who works under the name Asifgraphy, goes out to find.
Chasing clouds
Asif was born in Pakistan and has lived in Dubai for many years. By profession he is a marketer and media production specialist. Photography began as a passion and became his second life. “Photography is satisfying to my soul,” he says. Asif takes pictures of the urban landscapes of Dubai and Sharjah, capturing their skylines, landmarks, and waterfronts, alongside desert scenery and portraits. What fascinates him most is the moment when the city lights meet moving clouds at sunrise or sunset. “Whenever I see clouds over the horizon, it is impossible for me to stay indoors, whether home or office,” the photographer says.
Fog mornings are the rarest version of that moment. They come between September and March, most often in the coldest weeks of winter, and last only a few hours after dawn. To catch them, Asif climbs to the rooftops of Downtown Dubai before sunrise and waits.
The city above the clouds
What he brings back is a Dubai that no one expects. The street level is gone. The skyline becomes a sequence of pure vertical forms: the spire of Burj Khalifa, the twin towers of Address Sky View joined by their sky bridge, the high-rises along Sheikh Zayed Road. Architecture built to be seen from the ground is suddenly seen from the air, lit by the first warm light, with a white sea rolling slowly beneath it. In these photographs the city looks less like a metropolis and more like a painting: calm, weightless, almost unreal.
Asif’s own advice to photographers explains the quiet precision of his images: spend more time on the frame and the light, and publish only your best work, because quality matters over quantity. Each of these pictures is one of those chosen few.
You might also be interested in reading our article about Photographic Encounters along the Gulf Coasts, a permanent exhibition at the Sharjah Art Foundation, and viewing The General Behaviour by Emirati artist Farah Al Qasimi, one of the online exhibitions at the Cultural Foundation.
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