Return of the Soul
By Billy Kung
The exhibition, “Return of the Soul,” currently on view at Prince Claus Fund Gallery in Amsterdam, features works from five selected grantees of the 2014 Arab Documentary Photography Programme (ADPP). Launched in 2014 by the Arab Fund for Art and Culture and the Prince Claus Fund, in partnership with the Magnum Foundation, ADPP supports documentation of important social issues relevant to the Arab region, with a vision to raise the level of creative documentary photography and provide professional development for photographers. Each year, a juror’s committee comprised of Arab and international judges select up to ten photographers to receive financial and professional support to actualize their proposed projects.
Among the diversifying concerns addressed through the work of the five participants in “Return of the Soul,” they all shared a common thread: to document and to reflect upon various pressing humanitarian issues through their own personal experience in the context of a social landscape ravaged by conflict.
