New Archive of Middle Eastern Photography Features 9,000 Digitized Images

From Shamoon Zamir, a lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor at NYU Abu Dhabi, comes a “research archive of his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary pho­tog­ra­phy from the Mid­dle East and North­ern Africa (MENA),” designed to be  ful­ly acces­si­ble to the pub­lic. We’re told:

Today, Akkasah: The Cen­ter for Pho­tog­ra­phy at NYU Abu Dhabi boasts an archive of 62,000 images from the UAE and across the MENA region – of which 9,000 are already dig­i­tized and avail­able online — the only of its kind in the Mid­dle East. These images offer new insights into the his­to­ry and rapid trans­for­ma­tion of the UAE and the broad­er Arab world. They include his­tor­i­cal col­lec­tions rang­ing from the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry to the late twen­ti­eth, cov­er­ing a vari­ety of themes and top­ics, from ear­ly images of the Holy Lands and from the Ottoman Empire, to images from fam­i­ly albums, insti­tu­tion­al archives and the his­to­ry of Egypt­ian cin­e­ma.

You can vis­it the col­lec­tion of images here, which is itself divid­ed into a few key areas: His­tor­i­cal Col­lec­tions,  Con­tem­po­rary Projects, and Pho­to Albums.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20,000 Endan­gered Archae­o­log­i­cal Sites Now Cat­a­logued in a New Online Data­base

New Dig­i­tal Archive Puts Online 4,000 His­toric Images of Rome: The Eter­nal City from the 16th to 20th Cen­turies

Vis­it a New Dig­i­tal Archive of 2.2 Mil­lion Images from the First Hun­dred Years of Pho­tog­ra­phy