Basile Mookherjee : Fully Fueled

Fully Fueled brings together pictures taken from 2012 to 2014 by the young French photographer Basile Mookherjee, who documented young Emiratis' nights out and the United Arab Emirates' 42nd national holiday on the streets of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Flat, sprawled-out urban deserts, phallic urban geometries, reflecting surfaces and lavish ornamentation form the decor. The secret stars of these photographs are of course the cars, and the view seldom rises above windshield level. The human subjects, traditionally dressed in dishdasha (for men) and abaya (for women), seem as though photographed "through the lens of the car," as the photographer puts it. Fully Fueled is an over-the-top liturgy composed of the shapes and surfaces of our globalized environment. The book also reflects on the UAE's abrupt petrodollar-driven modernization and the aesthetic expression thereof in cities that have sprung up amid an essentially nomadic Middle Eastern culture. A world somewhere between desert dust and Gotham City, Islam and spending power, tradition and modernity.