What makes a moment worth remembering? A weekly visit to a grandmother or a hand reaching towards a plate of fruit may seem too ordinary to deserve a photograph. Yet these are precisely the kinds of moments gathered in Nothing Worth Mentioning, an exhibition on display at Kutubna Cultural Center until 27 September 2026. Bringing together 40+ works by 16 UAE-based photographers, it explores how seemingly insignificant details can become repositories of memory, identity, and emotion.
Curated by Dubai-born photographer and artist Ola Allouz, the exhibition is built around a question: can a feeling be archived? The idea emerged from Allouz’s photo trips to Kumzar, a fishing village in Musandam Governorate (Oman). Over six visits, the photographers who accompanied her produced numerous images, but what remained most vividly with Allouz were not necessarily the photographs themselves. Instead, she remembered the moments spent around the table: food being shared, stories exchanged, laughter, and conversations. The experience prompted her to consider how photography might preserve not only what happened, but also the emotional atmosphere surrounding it.
This approach gives Nothing Worth Mentioning its particular character. Rather than presenting photography as a record of spectacular places or exceptional events, the exhibition turns its attention towards rituals and details that are easy to overlook. In doing so, it suggests that the everyday can be just as revealing as the extraordinary. A repeated gesture can become a marker of affection; an object can retain the trace of a person; a familiar place can accumulate layers of personal history.
Among the creatives featured in the show are Emirati photographers Abdallah Alastad, Abdulla Al Ghurair, and Abdulla Alblooshi. Alastad, who is also an artist and calligrapher, is interested in the expressive possibilities of light, documenting its movement, reflections, and relationship with place. Abdulla Al Ghurair, meanwhile, uses both point-and-shoot film and digital photography to preserve everyday experiences. Born and raised in Deira, he employs photography to document cherished moments rather than construct elaborate scenes.
For Abdulla Alblooshi, photography is closely connected to the notion of home. Born in Ras Al Khaimah and based in Abu Dhabi, he photographs family life, personal spaces, cities, and heritage, working predominantly with colour film. His images are informed by the landscapes and communities that have shaped his sense of place.
The exhibition also includes Aisha Esmaeilzadeh, whose documentary and street photography focuses on everyday life, human stories, and cultural traditions. One of her images on view, A Moment Between Work, observes a worker resting amid the activity around Dubai Creek. It is an example of the exhibition’s recurring interest in pauses: moments when ordinary life briefly becomes still enough to notice.
Other photographers approach the same territory through analogue processes. April Ann Vocal works with film to capture fleeting encounters and subtle details. Meanwhile, Fatima Al Amiri focuses on unscripted scenes of street life, culture, and daily routines. For Al Amiri, shooting analogue encourages a slower pace of observation. Photographer Akhilesh Nair‘s photography is less about searching for a photo and more about noticing what is already there like people, places, gestures, and ordinary moments. His practice often examines memory, belonging, and the small details that give a place its character.
Self-taught photographer Preschelle Ann Bigueras likewise works primarily with analogue cameras; she explores everyday life, urban environments, and the relationship between built and natural landscapes. Emirati artist Fatima Albudoor brings another perspective, combining photography with printmaking and other artistic media. Her practice examines friendships and familial relationships, making photography another way of examining intimacy and connection.
The quieter works on display include Judite Serafim’s image of an empty chair holding folded prayer mats beneath one of Sharjah’s oldest mosques. Here, human presence is implied rather than shown: what has been left behind becomes evidence of an absent person and an ongoing ritual. Latifa Almazrouei similarly focuses on heritage, people, and street scenes; she uses warm and intimate imagery to record details that might otherwise disappear from view.
Artist Mohamed Al Alawi brings his background in engineering and architecture into a photographic practice centred on personal archives and domestic spaces. His work follows the way memory and human relationships develop through ordinary environments. One particularly personal project documents the relationship between his son Noah and the family cat Leo over six years, turning an everyday companionship into a visual record of childhood and time passing.
Maria Khodzhamberdieva approaches familiar subjects from unexpected perspectives. Sara Alshamsi photographs the places, people, and quiet scenes of Al Ain, treating photography as a way of retaining experiences she wants to remember. Maitha Alqassmi, whose creative practice encompasses writing, painting, and ceramics, extends the exhibition’s interest in everyday rituals into a multidisciplinary exploration of memory and lived experience.
At the centre of the exhibition is Allouz herself, whose photographic practice focuses on everyday life, culture, and human connection. A Fujifilm brand ambassador, she founded @foto.uae, a creative community that connects artists across the UAE. She is also well-known for her photo project Archiving the Now, which documents contemporary cultural life in the Emirates and has resulted in two books.
The exhibition extends beyond photography through Therapy Mail Club, an interactive installation by Emirati writer and artist Ayesha Alyassi. Visitors are invited to write, send, and share messages responding to the themes of the exhibition. This way, looking turns into an opportunity for participation and communication.
Nothing Worth Mentioning prompts one to think about what deserves our attention. The exhibited photographs do not document events that would make headlines or objects that would enter an archive. They preserve what tends to disappear first: habits, gestures, companionship, pauses, and fleeting impressions. The show asks whether the apparently insignificant might actually be where much of our personal history resides.
To learn more about Nothing Worth Mentioning, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.
You might also be interested in viewing Photographic Encounters along the Gulf Coasts.
To stay connected with the latest art news, you should follow our Telegram channel.
