OMAN IM MY EYES

Apr 27, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Apr 20

27 APRIL 2025 - 20 MAY 2025

Photography exhibition “Oman In My Eyes” by Ammar Abd Rabbo at Stal gallery, Muscat, Oman

Travel through time with a rare collection of photographs “Oman In My Eyes” by French

photographer Ammar Abd Rabbo.

Photography exhibition “Oman In My Eyes” provides a first-time ever look at a rare collection of

photographs by French photographer Ammar Abd Rabbo. This exhibition is tracing the rich and

layered history of Oman - from 1996 to today.

It is a thematic photography exhibition featuring 37 photos of the old Oman, ceremonies, sports

tournament hosted by Oman in the past, and portraits, works of street photography as well as

conceptual works.

The photos on show are some of the earliest images taken by photographer Ammar Abd Rabbo

who first set foot on Oman in 1996. The exhibition showcases a series of fascinating photos

which gives visitors an idea on how Oman looked like over 30 years ago.

Ammar Abd Rabbo said: “I have not returned every year, but Oman has never left me ! Since my first

journey in 1996, almost 30 years ago, this country has etched into me its lines of stone and light,

its silent and dignified faces, its still poetry within movement. With each return, I found a

different Oman. Changed, sometimes unrecognizable, yet always carrying a familiar presence, a

sense of stillness at the heart of transformation. The photographs gathered here are fragments

of a bond : they reflect what time shifts, what it reveals, and what it leaves untouched. They are

the witnesses of encounters and landscapes, of moments captured slowly, through an attentive

gaze. Photographing Oman, for me, is not about documenting. It is a kind of poetry and music in

front of my lense. It is about seeing as one remembers — with gentleness, with gravity, with

gratitude. I am thankful to the French Embassy in Oman to have organized this exhibition, and

the residence that allowed me to shoot new photos… and I let myself dream that maybe some of

them, will again be shown in some 30 years, with or without me !

Statement about Ammar Abd Rabbo

Born in Damascus, in 1966, Ammar Abd Rabbo lived in Libya and Lebanon before moving to France in 1978 after the intensification of the Lebanese Civil War. He studied political science at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques of Paris, then worked with Sygma and Sipa Press agency in Paris, as well as being a regular contributor to AFP Agence France Presse, and other agencies in Paris or the Middle East. In more than thirty years, his work has been published in leading and widely circulated publications, from Time Magazine to Paris Match, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, or Asharq Al Awsat, as he signed more than a hundred magazine and book covers.

Abd Rabbo’s portfolio includes war coverage in Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, and Syria; portraits of heads of states; world-renowned celebrities such as Michael Jackson or Stephen Hawking; as well as high profile events such as the Cannes Film Festival and Paris Fashion Week. His portraits of Pakistan's late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Actress Isabelle Adjani, French president Emmanuel Macron, or the Jordanian Royal Family as well as other personalities, are quite known and were published in the world's largest publications.

He participated in many “solo” and collective exhibitions at Banksy’s Dismaland, Weston-super mare, England (2015); Imago Mundi at Benetton Foundation, Venice Biennale (2015); BOX Freiraum gallery, Berlin (2015); Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2014); The Milan Triennale (2014); MAXXI Museum, Rome (2013). His work has been highlighted in solo shows at Katara Cultural Village, Doha (2016); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2015; 2012); Europia gallery, Paris (2014); and Ayyam Gallery, Dubai (2012 and 2020).

In Bosnia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria (in 2013 and 2014), he has chosen to document civilian life, daily resilience, and quiet resistance, rather than military action. This humanistic perspective is at the heart of his 2016 book “Alep, À Elles Eux Paix".

In 2018, he was named a Chevalier (Knight), of the French Order of Arts and Letters (a French government distinction order) in a ceremony in Paris.