200 rare photos: Dubai's transformation from 1960 to 1993 captured in new book

Résumé détaillé

A Dubai photographer has released his first book at the Sharjah International Book Fair, documenting the city's changing streets, buildings and daily life through historical images

For decades, Shaukat Rana Muhammad Rafi has been collecting photographs of Dubai, preserving images of streets, buildings and neighbourhoods that have changed beyond recognition.

From a city of modest buildings and narrow roads to one of skyscrapers and highways, he has watched the transformation through the lens of his camera.

Now, after building a collection of nearly 200,000 photographs, the long-time Dubai resident has brought some of those memories together in his first book — Dubai 1960–1993 — which was launched at the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) on Tuesday, November 10.

The book, published in collaboration with the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Heritage Centre, features approximately 150 to 200 historical photographs and documents offering a glimpse into Dubai's past.

"This book is about the documents of old Dubai and the history of Dubai. It also shows how Dubai looked in the 1960s and 1970s," Rana told Khaleej Times.

Rana, who has spent decades documenting life in the UAE, remembers a time when photography required careful planning and every photograph came at a cost.

"In those days, in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, I used cameras with film rolls," he recalled.

The arrival of digital photography changed the way he recorded the city.

"When digital cameras came, and later mobile phones, photography became free for me," he said, referring to the cost of taking pictures without buying film.

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