Dubai International Financial Centre

Dubai International Financial Centre By Katarina Premfors

I landed in Dubai in the middle of May on my 18th birthday in 1992. After a few days I went to a local newspaper and asked if they had any vacancies as a photographer. I had intended to stay only ten days. Within 7 months I had gotten to navigate every backstreet, ribbon cutting event, construction site and took as many interesting portraits as I could manage.

All the locations I photographed for this project are known to me, some only recently like Expo and Gate Avenue at DIFC which are newer locations. Some are nostalgic like Satwa, where I lived for 18 years, with its rooftops and dusty cricket matches, or sunset baseball at Al Quoz Pond Park, where my brother and niece played baseball two decades ago. From meeting Ray from Cameroon who has just arrived in the country, an expert goalie, fluent in French, Chinese and with his broad American accent, to chatting with bread makers, horse grooms, cricket players, baseball players, and sunset walkers, reminded me how I so loved the diversity of the people here. Getting out and re-visiting some of my old neighborhoods and taking photographs is meditative, is what keeps me passionate about this place and grounded to it.