What is the ‘ARI Image Allies’ initiative?
ARI Image Allies (AIA) is an initiative by ARI’s Communications Department, managed and run by its Communications interns. AIA brings together photographers from across the region to help visually accompany research and analysis produced by scholars, researchers, and knowledge makers from the Arab world.
At ARI, we publish work that engages with the urgent questions shaping the region today. Our research spans a wide range of issues, including environmental politics, climate justice and activism, social protection, economic justice, fair trade and agricultural policy, political transition, political participation, civic space, human rights, governance, and regional Arab politics.
Through the ‘Arab Image Allies’, we aim to build a growing pool of aspiring, passionate, and activism-oriented photographers whose work can be used as cover images and visual accompaniments for ARI knowledge.
The initiative is rooted in a simple belief: research about the region should also be visually represented by the region’s own image-makers.
Why photographers matter
At ARI, we believe that photography is an essential part of documentation and knowledge production. The stories, landscapes, struggles, and transformations explored in our research deserve to be represented through images that are locally informed, ethically produced, and visually honest.
By working with photographers from the region, we hope to foreground perspectives that are embedded in local realities rather than filtered through distant or generic visual archives. This helps ensure that the visual language surrounding our publications is as grounded, nuanced, and regionally rooted as the research itself.
Why we want to work with photographers from the region
ARI’s research is produced by and with researchers, activists, and practitioners from the Arab region. We want the visual identity of that work to reflect the same commitment.
Too often, publications about the region rely on stock imagery or outsider representations that flatten complexity and disconnect the visual from the lived realities being discussed. Arab Image Allies is one way of doing things differently.
We want to collaborate with photographers whose work captures the textures of everyday life, public struggle, social change, environmental realities, political expression, labor, community, and place across the region. Whether the subject is climate vulnerability, public space, migration, protest, agriculture, infrastructure, care, or survival, we are looking for images that carry depth, context, and a strong sense of place.
Who are the contributors?
Photographers selected through this initiative will be featured as Contributors to the Arab Image Allies network.
Contributors are photographers whose work ARI may draw on, with permission, to accompany publications and other non-commercial research communication materials.
What contributors receive
In recognition of their contribution, ARI Image Allies contributors will receive:
- Clear credit whenever their work is used by ARI
- Visibility across ARI’s digital platforms, including social media when relevant
- Attribution in connection with the publication or output their image accompanies
- Inclusion in a regional network of photographers contributing to independent knowledge production
- The opportunity to have their work associated with meaningful research and policy conversations shaping the Arab region
More broadly, contributors become part of an effort to strengthen visual storytelling that is rooted in the region and aligned with the values of independent, locally grounded research.
How to apply
If you are a photographer from the Arab region and would like to donate your art and become an ARI Arab Image Ally, we invite you to apply through our submission form.
We encourage non-Arab photographers who consider the Arab world their home to apply!
Questions?
For any questions, please contact us at:
L.Asaad@arab-reform.net
