Ali Zaraay
An Archive on the Move
Ali Zaraay’s series An Archive on the Move re-assembles an archive of family photos from a community of nomadic Bedouin people, based around the Nile River Delta. Collected together, these photographs tell a story of displacement, urban expansion, globalisation and tradition. The photos depict families posing in traditional celebratory dress, bright floral pinks and yellows contrasted with white ruffles and detailed embroidery. Posed in rural photo studios, the backdrops often depict interiors of European style houses, or bucolic scenes of grassy verges, stone bridges and meandering streams. Thus, the photos are situated in imagined locations, reflecting dreams of a permanent, settled home, at odds with the traditional nomadic lifestyle of the subjects.
The photos are often creased, torn or damaged by humidity; their very physicality testifying to the lives lived by those depicted in the frames. By integrating and highlighting this aspect of the nomadic archive into the series, Zaraay acknowledges the reality of building memory and identity within a nomadic community. Movement therefore becomes a tool in the series, as well as a subject.
This text is published in Foam Magazine #68: Talent, in June 2026. Read more about the Foam Talent Runners-up:
About the artist
ALI ZARAAY is an Egyptian visual artist and documentary photographer in Cairo. Since 2015, he has been working on his long-term documentary project Crawling on Dust, which in 2024 received a grant from the Culture Resource and AFAC’s ADPP, funded by Magnum Foundation and Prince Claus Fund, and was selected for World Press Photo’s Joop Swart Masterclass. He studied Documentary and Photojournalism at Hochschule Hannover, and completed a residency at the Cite Des Arts, Paris. Zaraay founded Safena 7, a collective which offers a space for critical and multidisciplinary programs around photography and visual arts in Egypt and the region.
About the author
ISABEL WALTER is a writer and curator based in Amsterdam. She currently works as Assistant Curator at Foam, and Editorial Assistant at Foam Magazine. She is particularly interested in art which expands the technical and conceptual boundaries of photography, moving image and new technologies.
Image credit: An Archive on the Move by Ali Zaraay