Seeing Oman Through a Lens

Salim was fifteen when his uncle handed him an old camera with a cracked strap. 'Don't photograph what everyone else photographs,' his uncle said. At the time, Salim didn't understand. He spent months taking pictures of sunsets and the sea, exactly like everyone else.

The change came on a winter morning in Wadi Bani Khalid. While other visitors photographed the turquoise pools, Salim noticed an elderly man repairing a falaj wall, his hands grey with mud. He asked permission, sat nearby for nearly an hour, and took only three pictures. One of them later won a national youth competition.

'That day I realised a photograph is not about a beautiful place,' Salim says. 'It's about paying attention.' Since then, he has travelled across the country, from the fishing villages of Al Ashkhara to the date farms of Bahla, looking for small moments that most people walk past.

He admits that social media sometimes frustrates him. 'People scroll through a hundred pictures in a minute,' he says. Still, he believes that one honest image can make someone stop, even briefly, and think about the lives behind the landscape.