This was by far the most stressful and confusing project I have done in Surface Research. I did not see myself as a collector and I have never collected anything which was part of the challenge. What made an interesting collection? I tried to find out.
My first collection. This was a huge failure. It was supposed to be a collection of paper packaging, but that was too broad, so it did not make much sense.
After considerable thought and observation, I decided to go back to the Khaleeji imagery idea that I explored in Khaleeji Kollage. I wanted an object that was recognizable and strongly associated with my culture. I wanted an object strictly defined by its function. Something like a finjan.
Within a weekend, I was able to collect a total of 60 fanajeen. Of course, I was not able to buy these fanajeen because aside from them being quite expensive at times, they were also always sold in a set, which was useless for collection purposes as I only needed one for each type. Therefore, the best method to collect these cultural objects was to borrow from neighbors, friends and family. That in itself was a very fascinating stage of the process because each household had a different taste or style of fanajeen. One household had only floral decoration, others had intricate gold decoration while some preferred their fanajeen to be simple and minimal in style. One can learn something about a family by looking at their fanajeen.
After the collection process has been completed, all the objects had to be photographed separately and presented in a booklet. I took my time at this stage because I had several ways to present by fanajeen. They can be scanned, photographed normally or upside down, with a simple or textured background. I explored all these options, which was quite time consuming. In the end, I chose photographing them upright with the camera at a low angle.
