TARIQ DAJANI

Photographer, printmaker, artist, freethinker

 

ARTIST STATEMENT

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When I like a work of art, it is because I am drawn to it emotionally. Without knowing why, I instinctively know how it makes me feel. When working creatively I seek elements of beauty and simplicity that naturally, even poetically, come together to inform the heart of the vastness within us. 

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To give the feeling of the night and not just tell it as it is, to transcend the mundane everyday realities through celebrating the aesthetic, to explore experiences and observations, allowing fragments of memories to feed into the immediacy of the present…these are things that I look for.

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“It is only with the heart that one can truly see.

What is essential is invisible to the eye"

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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "The Little Prince"

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My creative approach is minimal and uncomplicated. Practically, I produce traditionally hand-crafted photogravure prints in monotones, and modern digital Giclée prints usually in colour. I strive for quality and technical excellence, but above all emotional content to enrich the work with depth and meaning.

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TARIQ DAJANI - BIOGRAPHY

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Born in England to Palestinian-English parents, Tariq Dajani experienced his childhood growing up in various countries in the Middle East and Europe. This gave him an early appreciation of different peoples and cultures, which informed his relationship with the world..

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In his teens, he was drawn to music as an means of creative expression. Later, he opted for photography instead. He cites both music and literature, along with the visual arts, as essential to his continued artistic development.

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He first graduated from Warwick University with a BSc in Engineering, and later from Westminster University, London, with a BA in Photography and Art.

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His craft in photography and printmaking was shaped over 25 years through commercial work in advertising and design in London, Stockholm and Dubai, and through personal work on various artistic projects.​ Gradually he found a style that resonated with the truth and emotion that he was seeking. 

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From analogue, film-based photography and darkroom printmaking, Tariq moved to the technical excellence of digital image making. Years later, having a need for a manual connection and feel with his work he learned the craft of photogravure printmaking.

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He has exhibited in many solo and group shows. His work is held in the Center for Creative Photography (CCP), USA, Casa Árabe, Spain, the National Museum of Jordan, and the private collections of the Agha Khan, Bernard Arnault, members of the Hermes family and various Royal and ruling families in the Middle East and worldwide.

Tariq currently lives on a rural, organic farm in Galicia, north-western Spain, with his wife, and their four-legged family of Arabian horses and Saluki dogs. He combines his creative interests with a healthy, holistic lifestyle tending our organic vegetable garden and fruit trees,  walking our dogs, riding horses and letting my mind wander freely. 

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Tariq continues to pursue art projects and to exhibit regularly. He sells limited edition prints through galleries and his own site. He also tutors a few photogravure printmaking (photo-etching) and photography courses in his 120-year old farmhouse studio.

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WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID

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"There is a strange-making in much of Dajani’s work, a way of making perfectly ordinary things seem quite strange and extraordinary. Such work leaves the viewer feeling touched, moved, disturbed, with a whole complex of emotions, desperately wanting to know more.”

~ John Wood, poet, photographic historian & editor

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“Tariq Dajani is a photographer and printmaker. He is mostly known for his poetic portrait studies of the Arabian horse and the hunting falcon. Beautifully observed and mastered, the work displays intellectual depth and emotional maturity. It is contemporary while invoking something of the European Masters.”

~ Barbara Rowell, gallery owner, Jacaranda Images 

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A FEW LINKS

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"Tariq Dajani", Rfotofolio

“The Art of Filāḥa”, Collier Brown, Lensculture

"A thing of beauty", Matthew Teller

"Photographic Studies of the Arabian Horse", Horse Times

Caballo Árabe (in Spanish)

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