Ten/Ten, 2010

"I've always been interested in how photography functions, and I try to undermine any documentary authority it may possess as a medium. I've always felt that a photograph functions more like a memory, in that it's a singular perspective of a split second in time, entirely subjective and hence impressionable."

–Jowhara AlSaud

Ten/Ten, by artist Jowhara AlSaud, is from her Out of Line series. This body of work began to explore censorship in Saudi Arabia and its effects on visual communication. While there is a lack of consistency from region to region, overall, images are highly scrutinized and controlled. Some superficial examples would be skirts lengthened, sleeves crudely added with black markers in magazines, or blurred faces on billboards.

When reduced to sketches, the images achieved enough distance from the original photographs that neither subjects nor censors could find them objectionable; by etching these drawings back into film and printing them in a traditional darkroom, AlSaud points out how malleable it is as a medium, even before digital manipulation became so advanced and accessible. With these interventions emerges a highly coded and self-reflexive language.

C-Print
Edition of 15 and 3 Artist’s Proofs
Paper Size: 16 x 20 inches
Image Size: 16 x 20 inches
Signed and numbered by the artist

Jowhara AlSaud (b. 1978, Saudi Arabia) received a BA in Film Theory from Wellesley College and an MFA from the School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2004. AlSaud was runner-up for the 2008 Aperture Foundation Portfolio Prize. She has exhibited her work internationally in group and solo shows in Europe and the Middle East, most recently at art fairs Paris Photo, Art Palm Beach, the Aleppo 10th International Photo Festival in Syria, Scope NYC, Pulse NYC, Art Dubai, Schneider Gallery in Chicago and at the Berlin and Shanghai Biennales. Her work is part of collections across Europe, the US, and the Middle East. She splits her time between New York and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.