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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Ninety-Six: From the Persian Gulf to the Andaman Sea > Bigger than big, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2016
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02-DEC-2016

Bigger than big, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2016

I made this image from the deck of our cruise ship, just before we set sail on a 20 day journey from the Persian Gulf to the Andaman Sea. The haze of automotive pollution hangs over the city, abstracting the skyline and making it more symbolic than real. There are two striking incongruities in this image. One structure dominates the skyline. Incredibly and incongruously, it stands nearly twice as high as the normal skyscrapers that flank it. It is the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. The Burj and its neighbors are six miles away from me, allowing me to compare and contrast them to the miles of low structures that fill the foreground.

FujiFilm X-T1
1/1250s f/22.0 at 127.9mm iso640 full exif

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Phil Douglis01-Jun-2017 23:40
A perfect metaphor for Dubai, Rose. "A man-scape." The culture here, as in most of the middle east, has been centered on the male gender forever. I like your metaphorical phraseology -- you define this place as a "mixture of oil, blood, and money," and the men who created this place as "vying for the title of the biggest and most potent," -- a metaphor that can represent skylines all over the world.
sunlightpix01-Jun-2017 03:15
Perhaps like the culture, the landscape is dominated by masculinity. It's a man-scape.
The buildings are made from hard steel and rigid boxed concrete, each one thrusting into the heavens, while enveloped in a toxic milky haze derived from oil, blood, and money. Like men in a locker room, each vies for the title of the biggest and most potent. The absence of feminine energy renders the land flat and the culture one-sided.
Phil Douglis13-Mar-2017 19:03
Commerce drives Dubai, as it does most populous cities. So, yes -- Dubai can be viewed as a place where much is measured by economic success. I can see why you interpret Dubai as you do. The towers, when compared to the city in the foreground, can indeed suggest a contrast between winners and losers. If an image can make us think about such things, it is a worthy one. I thank you for your comment and for appreciating this photograph, even if it you find Dubai's lifestyle distasteful.
BleuEvanescence12-Mar-2017 20:13
Dubai.. Never been there but, to me, from a distance, this city feels like a place where souls are lost, unaware of their exixtence. Where money is competing with money, where challenges have no end and no means other than trying to impress people who can't be impressed by anything beside "winning" a never ending a power game. A place where you don't know what being alive is beside existing through the size of your bank acount...
Do I envy this lifestyle? Not even for one second... Great shot!!
Phil Douglis22-Feb-2017 05:33
Good point. You have always enjoyed wordplay.
Tim May07-Feb-2017 23:58
What I feel about this image is the haze, the way we in the West see the Middle East.
Phil Douglis04-Feb-2017 20:09
An amazing comment, Marisa! You have defined the ultimate meaning of my picture for me. Yes, this image can also be seen as a warning, as well as an absurd architectural comparison. I hinted at it in my caption, when I noted that "Pollution makes this image more symbolic than real." But my original intention was to stress the unreality of Dubai itself in this image. You have taken it several steps further, to speak of what man is doing to his environment. Thank you.
Marisa Taddia 04-Feb-2017 19:34
This image resembles a toxic dream, with a human delirium reaching the highest level away from the roots of Mother Earth. Environmental pollution, which dyes the contours and creates an interesting atmospheric perspective, reminds us of the consequences of going to infinity and beyond when there is no awareness of the irreparable damage that is generated.
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