Rehab Eldalil: On relinquishing ownership
In this episode we talk with Rehab Eldalil about relinquishing ownership. She describes different ways that she has used collaboration in her projects, and she unpacks what this means for the ownership of the work. She distinguishes between relinquishing ownership and abdicating responsibility, asserting the responsibilities that she has to the protagonists that she works with.
What does photography ethics mean to Rehab?
“I believed that, first, your ethics depends on you as a person, as a human, as a photographer, but also on the project and the people that you’re working with. … The whole idea of ethics is very fluid because it all depends on all of these different variables, but it’s something that you need to always think about, just like when you’re thinking about budgeting for your work, about shooting plans, travel itinerary, whatever - you still need to have this ethical column that you need to fill in and it all depends on these different variables.” (40:50)
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Rehab Eldalil is an award-winning documentary photographer, visual storyteller and educator. Her work focuses on the theme of identity explored through participatory creative practices. She received her BA in photography from Helwan University in Cairo in 2011, her MA in photography from Falmouth University in 2020, and a one year certificate in documentary photography from the International Center of Photography in New York in 2021. Her long-term personal project The Longing Of The Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken has won numerous awards. She has further received the AFAC & Magnum Foundation's Arab Documentary Photography Program Grant, the FotoEvidence W Award, and the World Press Photo Regional Award, among many others. Most recently, she received the Women Photograph and Getty Images Inclusion grant to work on her new project Nesting Birds. Rehab's work has been exhibited in many exhibitions around the world including USA, UK, UAE, Germany, Brazil, Switzerland and The Netherlands.
You can see her work at https://www.rehabeldalil.com