Visitors can help plant seeds that they can take home and later return to the desert as seedlings for the local biostation. We'll also teach them how to make biodegradable containers for holding water for these plants. This is about more than just raising awareness; it's about small collective actions and new connections
Lola Tillyaeva enjoys a diverse range of interests including entrepreneurship, philanthropy, film production and publishing. However, one of the causes closest to her heart is environmental activism.
Iranian photographer Hossein Zare captures in photography what we can only see in our dreams – otherworldly land and cityscapes infused with an sense of eternal longing. A longing to reconnect with the land, with the heavens? Step in to see just a small handful of his incredible work.
In my last post I featured a photograph of an unused structure out in the desert near Dubai, a concrete amphitheatre. It turns out there was more to explore.
My last photo blog on Green Prophet featured one of the many sites in the Hajar Mountains from which construction aggregate is extracted. This time I’m showing a different kind of mountain on the outskirts of Dubai. This is a landfill for building rubble.
Ask yourself: if you lived in the deep desert, where the sand burns your soles at midday, would you run outside and play soccer? No sane person should. But Dick Sweeney has sent us thought-provoking images of soccer posts in extreme environments that reveal just how much Arabs love their football.
Irish artist David Thomas Smith weaves thousands of Google Maps screen grabs into intricate designs mimicking Persian rugs. Look closer, and these symmetrical compositions reveal global landscapes transformed by mankind. Imagine a carpet made up of aerial satellite images of modern infrastructure: concrete roads and rooftops replacing fiber weft and warp. See this artist’s “rug” […]
This is a Chevrolet logistics depot in the Jebel Ali Freezone in Dubai. A rough estimate from studying the site on google earth puts the number of cars at about 8000 (on 12 Aug 2012.) Have a look for yourself at 24°55’40.06″N 55° 6’6.28″E. I’ve heard it said that American car manufacturers in the 1950s started […]
Unleash your inner Thoreau, show the human side of sustainability and and win $10,000 for a creative nonfiction essay. Have you been lucky enough to Dance at the Dead Sea but then couldn’t help but notice its destruction? Or you’ve have had the rare chance to travel and surf through unknown parts of Iran. Perhaps you […]
Plastic bottle cap picture by Mary Ellen Croteau The caps are synthetic artifacts, plastic products that usually aren’t (and more often, can’t be) recycled. Self-described political artist Mary Ellen Croteau explores absurdities of social norms, exposing the “underlying bias and sexist assumptions on which culture is constructed. So says her website, but her amazing artworks also […]
Richard Allenby-Pratt’s popular Abandoned photo series still haunts us. Currently based in Dubai, the professional photographer received numerous accolades for extraordinary compositions that depict wild animals meandering through a deserted Dubai. How surreal, and yet not so far removed from the truth, it is to see rhinos and giraffes searching for food amid a backdrop […]
Laurie recycles a Jordanian political poster into a handbag. Here’s how she does it. Voting is underway for Jordan’s Parliament. I’m not running, but I have this one in the bag! Hundreds of posters are hanging along Amman roadways; a somber assemblage of Middle Eastern manhood, mostly mustachioed. No wonder there’s tension in the lead-up […]
A UK-based scientist has removed trees from world famous works of art to highlight the threat of deforestation In the field of climate change, we are constantly asked to imagine nightmarish scenarios. Situations where water may run dry, where mass migrations are provoked by food shortages or where extreme weather events on the rise. These […]
Whether your sandy reminiscences are wet or dry, two artists have devised ways to make your memories tangible. My brain inextricably links sand to sea thanks to 25 summers spent on a New Jersey barrier island. Middle East experiences have me now connecting the grainy stuff to locations and memories largely devoid of water, such […]
Magnificent public art or environmental boondoggle? Oil drums stacked to the height of the Giza pyramids. Christo, the artist who temporarily wrapped acres of fabric around the Pont Neuf and the Reichstag, now plans to stack thousands of empty oil drums in the Abu Dhabi desert in his first ever permanent installation. The finished work […]