If ever there were a trite maxim, then a strong contender for the worst is: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” It is false in that it frequently both underestimates the value of a picture and limits the story that created it to little more than a quick read. In the case of Madeha Al-Ajroush, who quite recently discovered she was the first Saudi woman to become a professional photographer, that evaluation is particularly poignant.
Businesswoman, photographer and psychotherapist Al-Ajroush is an energetic, highly focused and engaging fifty-something woman who converses with an intensity and passion for her subject that captures her listener’s undivided attention. That is interesting in itself for her main occupation is that of psychotherapist, in which a major skill is that of focused listening and analysis by the therapist.
When outside her professional milieu, her energy and obvious enthusiasm for her work is overwhelming and is clearly what drives her to do what she does best; communicate. Whether she does that by introducing her clients in her psychotherapy practise to uncomfortable areas within themselves or the wider public to her passionate involvement with showing the position of women in Arabian Peninsula society through her deeply moving photographs, Al-Ajroush was created to communicate.
She was born into a Saudi diplomatic family and is one of ten children of whom only three survived, the last one dying in her thirties some eight years ago. Through a process of inexorable and deeply affecting elimination she was found herself in the role of the eldest child and gradually took on the responsibility for looking out for her parents and younger siblings growing up around her. This she felt was the source of her developing an interest in psychotherapy and was a formative part of her future life. “I think all therapists tend to become therapists because they took care of their parents. We are expert, really expert because we did it in early childhood. We just go to school for some training.”
Although the seeds for Al-Ajroush’s interest in psychotherapy may have been laid while she was young, it was her career as a photographer which started first, albeit inauspiciously.
From the age of 12 she had worked at jobs that provided some cash. “I hated doing nothing,” she said. With time on her hands she decided to spend her savings on an exotic camera and learn how to use it.
Her first engagement was at a cousin’s wedding where, with by far the most professional camera there, she took on the role of wedding photographer. There the photographer’s nightmare became reality; having loaded the film incorrectly, the entire shoot when developed proved blank.
“Through my life I have faced a series of failures and challenges — this was one of the major failures. Those people trusted me and my camera” she recalled. She had to make a decision: “Do I get embarrassed and fall on my face or pick up, dust down and walk?” She walked and concentrated on learning her craft on her own with no one to train her — trial and error or more appropriately, failure and challenge.
Her ambition to become a psychotherapist was only dormant. She married and traveled to Oklahoma with her new husband and took a BA in psychology while her husband finished his doctorate. “Education was a dream. Because of my home culture I was not able to go through the sequence of educating myself.”
In the early 1980s, although Al-Ajroush returned to Saudi Arabia with a psychology degree, she was unable to develop her training into a career. “You cannot be a therapist with a BA. There was also no professional path for me because in those times women were only allowed to be physicians or teachers.”
Photography sustained her drive and her husband bought an entire studio set-up for her. “It was an expensive gift — I felt I had to continue. It made a real difference in my life considering the oppression the culture put me under.”
Through introductions, Al-Ajroush became involved in fieldwork with UNICEF in the Kingdom. Working in Abha, she continued photographing and was deeply impressed with the beauty of the country. “The culture was so different from the Najd,” she reflected.
During her sojourn in Asir, the environment and the people inspired her to record her experiences and use the opportunity to extend her photography skills. Eventually the images were published in a book but, Al-Ajroush commented, she realized that they were not up to international standard. Rather than give up at this point, she decided that self-teaching was not enough and took professional training courses in the US. That fact secured her position and made her the first Saudi female photographer.
Al-Ajroush said that her new skills and training encouraged her to mount a couple of exhibitions. “That brought some local fame but although now a professional, the business was run out of the home and I could not grow because among other obstacles, I was unable to get a license to open a processing laboratory, a studio, hire more people. I felt my potential could not be maximized.”
Although she went into business as photographer seriously and with a view to slow long-term growth, she encountered other less obvious obstacles. Women were only allowed to open one studio at a time — seriously limiting expansion. They were also only allowed to have a shop-front studio on the main street — which attracted high overheads that cut into profit. Moreover the clientele was restricted to females only, whereas male photographers could serve both genders. Despite the restrictions on her business, she gradually became a fixture on the photographic scene.
“Growing in the business field has been very difficult — it is not a level playing field and nor do you have access to the open market. Therefore one has to wonder whether one can grow to one’s full potential,” she commented. Since 2004 however, the number of professions open to women has increased. “There still are trip wires and hurdles all the way, though.”
It was during this period — 1990 — that Al-Ajroush’s gave birth to her first child, a girl. It was to prove a life changing experience. By 1994 , she realized that the infant was not developing and took her to New York. There Al-Ajroush discovered she had cerebral palsy and was severely mentally retarded. “I hadn’t realized she was palsied and mentally retarded. I was a typical parent in wonderful denial. I had to be hit in the face with the reality.”
Al-Ajroush stayed in the US to get the care her child needed. While there, she was awarded a scholarship by King Fahd and went to Columbia University to achieve her life long ambition as a psychotherapist with a degree in counselling.
After graduating with two degrees in psychology from Columbia in Manhattan, Al-Ajroush went through intensive postgraduate training at the Institute of Contemporary Psychodynamics. “It was the best of experiences,” she said.
Returning to Saudi Arabia with qualifications and a deeply personal motive to pursue her dream, Al-Ajroush opened a psychotherapy practice. It took a long time to establish because she was known in the Kingdom as a photographer. Nonetheless, the practice grew and while photography was still a major part of her life, of necessity it assumed a secondary importance for some time. “I’d be a liar if I said I can do both at once — I prefer to focus on one thing at a time,” she confided.
Despite her preference, Al-Ajroush maintains an interest level in photography that for many would constitute a full time career. While a full time psychotherapist, she maintains a studio and clientele and teaches women photography in institutes and recreation centers; she has done for eight years. “I think it is so important to teach,” she opined. “I feel I learn more than my students.”
Photography and psychotherapy have for Al-Ajroush been tandem careers. At the time she was taking her degrees in New York, the city was the center of the photographic world. She held several exhibitions both there and in Washington DC. “The subject matter was generated and informed by my emotions about the status of women in Saudi Arabia,” she said. The exhibitions were noticed by the Washington Post and transferred to a mobile exhibition that has been mounted in several state in the US and in other countries. The last was just recently in Lyons, France. “They were art for art, highly constructed. Every frame expressed my emotion and they were in a series that, when the viewer reached the end of it, they would come out of it with the sense of emotion I had when I photographed,” explained Al-Ajroush.
It was also an intensely personal process that allowed her to come to terms with her life and go through the process every psychotherapist must endure to be worthy of the name; self-examination.
“In a way I felt I succeeded in getting through my frustration, anger and explosive feeling by working things out through art and communication. It was a catharsis, very relieving to have it out.”
She describes herself as a photographer of record but seeing her work, it is immediately apparent this is not simple photojournalism. The subject matter is frequently carefully posed, beautifully lit and sometimes has not too subtle images of cultural weight bearing down on the backs of women. The record is not just an image. It is in equal measures a record of the emotion that drove Al Ajroush to take it, a deep understanding informed by her psychotherapeutic training of the effect of the emotion on the subject and a poignant commentary on the society that generated it. It is communication on many levels and at its simplest, a series of beautiful images — or as Al-Ajroush says: “A record of a state of being.”
Al-Ajroush’s latest foray into the field of photography is as a member of the short-listing panel for a ground-breaking photography competition, “The Ambassador,” sponsored by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs and masterminded by Eissa Angawi, founder of Saudi Photographers` House, the competition offers very substantial cash prizes. The theme — loosely arranged around tourism — focuses on Saudi culture and people and will be judged by a team of established professional photographers from the UK.
“This is a huge step forward for photography in the Kingdom,” enthused Al-Ajroush. “The competition itself is extremely exciting — the ministry has taken it upon itself effectively to promote photography. To this day it is not fully accepted in Saudi Arabia.”
Typically, Al-Ajroush concluded with a social comment that reflected her deep underlying passion. “Women entered — not as many as men and their photos were more geared indoors which is quite understandable in the culture. But they dared challenge!”
