time, narrative and photography - basma
  Basma was the youngest member of our group of 11. At 14, she was a full 20 years younger than our oldest member, Mahmood.
On the first day of our workshop Basma said very little but in her photograph, by Hanaa, she appeared the most emotive of the group. The first excercise of the workshop, taking place before the group introduced themselves to one another, was a fictional ‘write around' of each other's possible lives followed by a Polaroid portrait of the fictional character taken by another workshop participant. Basma later said that although the biography that we all created for her was different than the life she had lived, she could still understand and feel the fictional character's longing for a better future.
Basma is a writer, and “translating” her writing into photographs was a concern of hers throughout the workshop. This is her triptych documenting the past, present and future of a “loss”. She chose to capture the life, and death, of a tree.
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