All images © Dunya Zita
Every year, BJP publishes its Ones to Watch issue – our selection of the artists who epitomise the talent and creativity in international photography today, as nominated by a global network of curators, editors, and artists.
As we finalise this year’s list, to be published in Issue 7926, out this June, we’re revisiting the 2025 Ones to Watch. Today, Dunya Zita, as nominated by curator Lisanne van Happen.
After spontaneously quitting her job at a concept store five years ago, Dunya Zita felt compelled to embark on a photographic journey, one that would allow her to better understand both image-making and herself. “I felt like I had to [quit] in order to see what would come out of it. So that’s what I did,” she says.
The self-taught, Utrecht-based photographer travelled to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and volunteered at a refugee camp, teaching children arts and sports. In doing so, she was partly motivated by a desire to connect with her roots in the region, though her family is originally from Morocco. “I had never done a photography project before, I just started with analogue photography,” she recalls. “I used cameras and film I had never used, so I had no clue what I was doing. And I only shot analogue – I didn’t have a digital backup.”
Zita worked intuitively and the result is honest imagery in her series Beyond Borders. She does not rely on stereotypes or photographic tradition; instead, her still lifes of refugee tent interiors show some universal joys of everyday life, while her portraits of the children are warm, inviting a generous intimacy between viewer, subject and photographer.
“If you don’t share the words to communicate clearly you have to focus on a different layer of someone’s existence” – Dunya Zita
To date, Zita’s work has all been based in the SWANA region, which she calls “a coincidence”, but is perhaps not surprising given her initial urge to explore her heritage and the Arabic-speaking world. Now, she is working on a project “which is not necessarily one specific region, but more about the connection between body, mind and spirit”.
The film Beyond Words is Zita’s continuation of Beyond Borders, exploring similar themes of migration, home and geography. “It’s a project about my family in Morocco,” she explains. “We don’t speak the same language, but we have a strong connection, and in Lebanon, in the refugee camp, it was the same. I couldn’t express myself in a way they could understand, but I feel this limitation makes you focus on each other in a different way. If you don’t share the words to communicate clearly you have to focus on a different layer of someone’s existence.
“It’s difficult, of course – there are limitations and complications,” she adds. “You need more attention, you need more calmness, you need more patience, but you do really tune in to someone’s energy.” Though Zita visited Morocco many times as a child, she started to get to know the country properly when she began travelling there alone at 18.
“Dunya Zita uses photography, film and poetry to explore a sense of community,” explains curator Lisanne van Happen, who nominated her for Ones to Watch. “Can you feel part of a community you have never been physically part of? How can the values you find there be part of who you are, even though you grew up in a completely different culture? Her curious, open, empathetic gaze creates connection and makes you, as a spectator, part of her personal quest. Her work is direct, rough and yet poetic and open for interpretation for the viewer. In her installations she brings together different media that create new perspectives on a world we think we know.”
Beyond Words was part of an exhibition with 10 migrant or diaspora artists for the Maritime Museum, Rotterdam. Today, Zita is looking forward to expanding her film practice, seeing where her curiosity will lead her. As she grows her portfolio she plans to experiment with incorporating mixed material into her photographs by collaging her analogue prints.
