OUT OF TOUCH, 2018.


Ibrahim Azab’s photographs of objects and gestures present themselves as romantic performances. They highlight the complex and unusual relationships between visual language and the medium of photography.

Throughout his body of work, Azab simultaneously creates documentary and constructed photographs, making the veracity of the images unclear to the observer. repeatedly we see the appearance of a hand in these photographs, performing and engaging with the surface of the image and object.

Failure is a common theme within Azab’s practice. He questions the authenticity of photographs alongside the process of haptic memory within consciousness. Whether observed through the lens of the camera or the eye of the observer, he narrates how photography can act as a form of ‘sensing’ as well as a form of ‘seeing’. The artists images reveal an uncanny perspective. At first the photographs appear as simply composed still lives, but upon closer inspection his use of photographs as backdrops within the images are revealed and an illusion is presented to the viewer, referencing our capacity to desire and believe. This uncertain placement of time within a space raises a critical conversation around the performance, language and physicality within the medium of photography.