Salih Basheer (Arabic: صالح بشير, born 1 January 1995)[1] is a Sudanese photographer.
Since 2018, he has been awarded several grants and prizes for photography, and his photo stories have been exhibited in Ethiopia, the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and the United Arab Emirates. His 2023 publication 22 Days in Between is the first photo-book ever by a Sudanese photographer.
After finishing secondary school in Sudan, he moved to Cairo in 2013 and received his Bachelor's degree in Geography from Cairo University in 2017. During his studies in Egypt, he started as a self-taught photographer.[2]
Life and work
After his graduation, Basheer began to work on his first long-term project titled Sweet Taste Of Sugarcane.[2] This documentary Photo Story about the harsh conditions of students in a khalwa, a Sudanese religious school, was shown at the international Addis Foto Fest in 2018.[citation needed]
His next project, called The Home Seekers, was supported by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) in 2019. In this, Basheer recorded the lives of other Sudanese refugees in Cairo, who are living in exile and thus are "look[ing] inward in search for a 'home', looking for a better life and education".[3] This visual story was exhibited in October 2021 at the Diffusion Festival in Cardiff, Wales[4] and the same year in France as part of the group exhibition "Mon ami n'est pas d'ici" at the Institut du Monde Arabe's exhibition space in Tourcoing,[5] as well as at the festival "Les Rencontres à l'échelle" in Marseille.[6]
In 2020, Basheer started a diploma course in photojournalism at the Danish School of Media and Journalism (DMJX) in Aarhus and was awarded a scholarship by The VII Foundation.[7][8] In addition, he obtained the Shahidul Alam Grant for the development of independent photojournalism by the Danish School of Media and Journalism.[9]
In 2021, Basheer received the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund student grant for his narrative project 22 Days in Between, remembering the loss of his parents and the challenges of settling into a new home with his grandmother. According to the fund,
"This project is Salih's visual process of learning more about his parents and himself and serves as a method of healing from the trauma of losing his parents. Salih says that having a camera in his hand gave him the courage and comfort level to ask questions about his parents and their deaths."[10]
For the same visual story, Basheer was awarded the Everyday Projects Grant.[11] In 2022, he received another grant from AFAC through their visual arts program for 22 Days in Between.[12] His photographs were selected for the 2022 African Photography Encounters in Bamako, Mali.[13]
In January 2023, Basheer published 22 Days in Between, the first ever photo-book by a Sudanese photographer, that evokes his early childhood and memories of his parents, who died within the period of 22 days, when Basheer was only 3 years old. An article in the British Journal of Photography described this photo-book as an "introspective narrative [...] explored through various formats: personal writing, self-portraits, archive images, and drawings that Basheer drew recently but from the perspective of a child – to uphold the idea that he is still a kid longing to bond with his parents."[15] In his review in The Washington Post, Kenneth Dickerman said:[16]
This is a remarkable book that plumbs the depths of memory and the building blocks of identity. It is a gem. It'll suck you in and is a profound excavation of what it means to be human, pitfalls, elation, misery and sadness combined.
Publications
22 Days in Between: Photographs from Sudan, Copenhagen: Disko Bay, 2023. ISBN9788797352632.[17]
