Bir Zekreet, Qatar — Limestone Escarpment

Bir Zekreet, Qatar — Limestone Escarpment

There is not much in the way of altitude in Qatar, which only serves to exaggerate the small escarpment on the northwestern coast of the peninsula, near Dukhan. The limestone formations at Bir Zekreet offer something close to a geology lesson in desert erosion: wind has gradually worn away the softer sedimentary rock, exposing pillars and a large mushroom-shaped outcrop of harder limestone.

The landscape has a quality that is both austere and quietly theatrical. The formations rise from a flat, featureless plain with an abruptness that makes them feel almost placed rather than grown — as though the desert has arranged them deliberately. The light at certain times of day intensifies this effect, casting long shadows that emphasise the sculptural character of the rock.

Photography and the Desert Landscape

Working photographically in this kind of landscape requires a different kind of attention to the one I bring to the Fenlands or the forests of East Anglia. The scale is different, the light is different, and the absence of vegetation removes the layered complexity that I usually work with. What remains is form, shadow, and the quality of the stone itself — a more reduced and elemental set of visual elements.

These photographs were made during a period of living and working in Qatar. The experience of that landscape — its flatness, its heat, its geological strangeness — has remained a point of reference in my thinking about space and surface, even as my painting practice has returned to the more familiar terrain of northern Europe.