© Mohamed Mahdy
When the Fog Whispers explores the countryside of Saudi Arabia through a photographic commission prize
The Kingdom Photography Award 2025 unfolded this spring in Jeddah, offering a multifaceted portrait of Saudi Arabia through the lenses of its emerging photographers. Now in its third edition, the award – spearheaded by the Visual Arts Commission – has quickly established itself as a platform for nurturing Saudi talent and elevating local stories to national and international prominence. This year’s showcase at Hayy Jameel brought together two exhibitions that captured the country’s urban heartbeat, cultural heritage, and natural landscapes.
Over 1,300 participants submitted more than 6,000 photographs to this year’s competition, a striking testament to the Kingdom’s surging interest in visual storytelling. A diverse jury – comprising artists, curators, and international experts including Shannon Ghannam, Sara Al-Mutlaq, Rola Khayyat, and Roi Saade – meticulously distilled the entries into a selection that speaks both to technical mastery and emotional weight.
The exhibition titled Hay Ainek – In a New Light served as the focus of the award’s public showcase. The thirty photographers featured aimed to highlight the region through a lens unhindered by archetype or photographic tradition, opting instead for a renewed vision of authentic Saudi life.
In tandem with the urban stories, the commission When the Fog Whispers invited visitors to travel south to the mountains of Asir, with the final exhibition curated by Gulf Photo Plus’s Mohamed Somji. This series, developed through artist residencies and commission trips, offered a reflection on the region’s natural beauty, heritage, and complex identities. Photographers Abdulmajeed Al Roudhan, Elham Al Dawsari, Lina Geoushy, Mohamed Mahdy, and Hicham Gardaf captured Asir not simply as a landscape but as an emotional and cultural space. Geoushy’s portraits celebrated Al-Qatt Al-Asiri, the UNESCO-recognised women’s mural painting tradition, by placing its practitioners at the centre of the frame, dignified and present. Mahdy’s delicate compositions explored themes of belonging and the dialogue between people and land, rendering Asir as both a physical terrain and a space of introspection.
Beyond the exhibitions, the Kingdom Photography Award functioned as a living, breathing incubator for Saudi photographers. Workshops, artist-led talks, and mentorship sessions fostered critical exchange, while exploratory residencies immersed participants in the textures of local life and tradition. With a prize pool of 400,000 SAR and pathways to international exposure, the programme is actively scaffolding the country’s growing photographic ecosystem.
In many ways, the Kingdom Photography Award reflects the broader cultural momentum of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 – a deliberate investment in the arts as a means to tell local stories on a global stage. What feels significant about this initiative is its rootedness; it is not borrowing narratives but cultivating homegrown ones, amplifying voices that see Saudi Arabia from within.
The Kingdom’s photographic awakening aligns with a wider regional surge. Festivals like Qatar’s Tasweer Photo Festival are similarly platforming work that interrogates displacement, heritage, and everyday life from within the SWANA region. Both movements seem to signal a crucial shift: local photographers are no longer waiting for external validation.
@gardaf @linageoushy @majeed86 @elhamdawsari @mohamedmahdyph