As part of the weekly initiative “What was Dedicated to Qatar”, which was launched by the Qatari Forum for Authors at the beginning of December on the occasion of celebrating the National Day, the forum hosted on Tuesday evening the writer and photographer Ms. Modi Al-Hajri to review her experience that is full of achievements and international participation in the photographic exhibitions dedicated to her country, Qatar.
Ms. Al-Hajri confirmed that fine art and photography are converging arts that cannot be separated. Despite the fact that this field is far from her scientific specialization in the field of chemistry, she found her passion in it and found that she had a special and distinctive view of aesthetics and colors, which is what made her production as distinct and different from those of specialists in arts and photography.
And she said that she began her early career in drawing textile figures under the microscope light, so her imaging tools were a microscope and a camera. She used to visualize scenes, enjoying their composition and the harmony between them, and then began to paint them and participate in some exhibitions, and used watercolors on silk cloth.
In 1999, she presented her first personal exhibition, which met with great presence, because it was the first of its kind, considering that painting on silk was not popular at the time, and the combination of its unique and different works in which arts and beauty intertwined with science made it the focus of attention, and it continued in this manner.
As for the hobby of photography, it is the hobby that accompanies Hajri since childhood, as she bought the first camera when she was 9 years old and used to photograph her family and the people of the neighborhood, and the camera kept accompanying her in various stages of her life and she saw life and beauty through her lens, even she was accompanying her on her annual travels that she spends in photography.
Her unique and distinguished works attracted attention to her and made her receive many honors and awards, and she obtained membership in many associations and the Fine Artists and Photographers Union, and her participation in local and international exhibitions reached 88 in addition to 15 personal exhibitions between fine arts and optical images exhibitions.
She explained that each artist has a different view and a different side for drawing or taking a picture, as the artists usually focus in their images on the things that attract them and which they tend to, and according to the message they want to deliver, so the photography for her and throughout her career was divided into several stages, the first of which is the documentation stage after that tourism photography and then the stage of conveying the targeted messages.
Her experience and career has been strengthened by the publication of her book “Yemen, the Love that Attracts you”, published in 2019, which documented through photos her journey to Yemen, which was initially a tourist trip and turned into a documentary one, where she was impressed with the beauty of Arab heritage and architecture and felt the responsibility to document it for future generations. .
She conveyed through the pictures her feelings about the place and the spirit of the place, and she also tried to shed light on the suffering of children during the wars that she personally touched, so that the number of pictures that she took in Yemen exceeded forty thousand pictures and the photos covered 19 governorates out of 21 ones.
Al-Modi emphasized that the danger and difficulties she faced during her recent visit to Yemen did not decrease her love for that country and did not prevent her from completing her work of taking photographs and continuing the visit, considering that some archaeological areas should be in the book, no matter how difficult it is to reach them due to their importance and historical position.