Ala Kheir: In This City Khartoum

"Khartoum is a very strange city, even for someone who spent most of his life here. Through photography, I drew on Khartoum like a playground, wandering around trying to discover and rediscover feelings that are continuously changing, like the city.

In 2014, I started my first photo narrative about Khartoum called Revisiting Khartoum, where I visited familiar spaces in downtown Khartoum that I used to frequent with my parents when I was a young boy."

"I photographed these spaces linking what I see now, to how it felt 30 years ago, documenting the mixed emotions between then and now. This was just the beginning as I am a wanderer, always in different places. I grew up in a low class neighbourhood which, back then, was the edge of the city. Through the years I have changed homes, and moved into different neighbourhoods and different communities which I think gave me a very solid understanding of the complex, rapidly expanding city.

Khartoum now is a mixture of different worlds, a low-built, sprawling city, with a strange spirit depending on where you go, culturally divided, but our people of Khartoum do not acknowledge that. And a lot more. Khartoum is an untold story."

-Ala Kheir