Via Harper’s Bazaar
For Saudi photographer Rawan Al-Turki snapping photos is an emotion rather than a job. The Jeddah-based creative force is mostly known for her fashion photography and has made a name for herself for focusing on how today’s Saudi women are expressing themselves via the clothes they wear. Through her camera’s lens, she shows how Saudis are letting their sense of style do a lot of the talking.
Proving she is one of the Kingdom’s haute female self-starters, Al-Turki’s eye-catching work has been highlighted in the second edition of female-focused Saudi street style book ‘Under the Abaya: Street Style from Saudi Arabia," a stereotype-shattering book for all modern Saudi women to share their accomplishments and gifts with the rest of the globe.
Al-Turki, who doesn’t have a problem in finding beauty everywhere she looks, started her own photography venture, Clickers Photography, in 2009. The shutterbug with a Marketing major from a Jeddah university banded together with Wed Khashoggi, another Saudi who is passionate about fashion and photography. After admiring shots by international fashion photographers in some old "Vogue" magazines, they decided it was time to boost the Kingdom’s artistic fashion scene.
“When we started our company we were clueless; we didn’t know what we were doing but our passion for photography pushed us to go online and research everything about it,” Al-Turki told Saudi English daily "Arab News." “We gathered our friends and relatives and started experimenting by using different lines, lights and accessories. We also did our own make-up and hair on the models, in addition to creating our own themes. That’s how we learned to use our creative side but we knew we needed to improve our photography skills,” she added.
They wanted to perfect their work for the Jeddah and Dubai-based hub, so took various courses related to fashion photography, including lookbook fashion photography, editorial photo shoots and advertising photography, in Dubai. Combing what they learned and inspired by just about anything, they started getting attention for their ultra-creative fashion photography and campaign projects. With restrictions like a lack of professional models and difficulties in finding good photo shoot locations and getting permits at the time, their foray into fashion photography was impressive to say the least.
