Ikram Abdulkadir
words by Anne Kimunguyi
Audre Lorde once said, ‘Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize that we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy’. I think of this quote as I look at Ikram Abdulkadir’s work. Based in Malmo, Sweden, photographer Abdulkadir makes intimate portraits of her family and friends in a variety of settings and moods. Throughout her series of images, we see her loved ones on a beach at sunset, sombre yet smiling cheekily in the park, or tenderly helping each other with their hair at home.
Abdulkadir’s photographic practice began as a teen. Initially taking photographs driven by aesthetics, she was unable ‘feel any sort of way about this and put her camera down for two-three years’. As Abdulkadir told me, it was a trip to visit her family in Nairobi, Kenya, that was the catalyst for the development of her visual language as it is today. Taking photos of her ‘family…brought me such joy, I realised what I wanted to do was take portraits’. A self-proclaimed introvert, Abdulkadir’s hesitancy with approaching strangers led her to ‘start with her sisters and really enjoy that.’ As her practice developed, she continued to photograph those close to her.
This intimate focus on family has become a signature theme of Abdulkadir’s work. Her series, We will meet again in paradise sees her sisters and friends photographed in a park, caressed by a warm, autumnal hue. Close-up shots of her subjects capture shared moments between loved ones. Girls leaning on each other and laughing together evoke a sense of closeness. They form part of a collection of a broader ongoing project – I see home in you – its meaning reflecting this familial bedrock that anchors the artist’s personal work and life. ‘I take the photos for myself’, Abdulkadir says, ‘I feel like [my work] is an extension of family photos we have at home, because they are so artistic even though they weren’t taken for any other purpose other than for sharing with family’.
The series Do you remember the ocean, Obayo? sees Abdulkadir’s subjects photographed on the precipice of a sunset, on a beach in Skåne, in southern Sweden. The series locates a sense of stillness among the restlessness that Abdulkadir characterises of the 2021 pandemic lockdowns. Hazy blue skies meet a clear horizon and jagged sandy shores form the ground on which two women are photographed holding each other. Foreheads intimately rest against one another, and hands are firmly held whilst two women stand on a pier, embodying a solid sense of partnership and bonding. On the origins of the series, Abdulkadir explains: ‘I went to Somalia for the first time with my mum and where she grew up is also near the coast. I was thinking about the links between [my parents] upbringing and childhood and mine and my siblings and what it means to have fled from one coastal area to another in some way. Not what it means to flee, but the ocean basically’.
For Abdulkadir, the ocean’s restorative force is layered with its significance as a site of connection and reflection. In photographing her loved ones in moments of vulnerability and comfort, Abdulkadir’s images are a depiction of and an attempt to connect across time, place and generation. A figure strides towards the ocean, their back to us. A girl’s head is lovingly held in the palms of a person unseen in the photo, her eyes closed, the sea blurry in the background. A sense of clarity and calm seeps through, the subject’s closed eyes a focal point of stillness amidst the setting’s transient waters. Mediating on distance and closeness in the same breath, Abdulkadir makes use of the ocean’s vastness as the perfect melancholy backdrop for these moments of love, togetherness, and tranquillity.
Abdulkadir’s affinity for the sea drives the location choice of her images. ‘I just really like the ocean’, she says. This framing of her work around a personal sense of joy forms the basis of Abdulkadir’s practice in both approach and essence. On photography, she says, ‘I realise that it literally just brings me joy. I needed to accept joy as a driving force. Being working class, a refugee and all these things, maybe it’s just me, I didn’t just allow myself to be driven by joy – it had to be productive, [but] photography is the one thing that didn’t start off like that’.
Abdulkadir describes her series We will meet again in paradise as a partial attempt to ‘[find] solace in the inevitability of death.’ Intentionally nostalgic in tone, this series offers a glimpse into the intuitive and loving relationships that guide Abdulkadir’s work with her family. Women and girls – Abdulkadir’s sisters - cluster together in a park, dressed all in white, while the backdrop of autumnal orange and pale green leaves whispers encouragement for such grief-driven lamentations on mortality. Yet the snapshots of Abdulkadir’s loved ones amid laughter offer sweet glimpses into moments of play and relaxation as ways of generating meaning and comfort.
Praising her younger sister, Salma, who is most often featured in her photographs as ‘amazing [in]…excut[ing] that energy in the photos we take’ she says. ‘There is a comfort in our relationship…I don’t have to take a hundred photos just to have one photo that is good… it’s a confidence thing between us.’ It is also just a fun time for Abdulkadir and her family and friends. ‘They are all real moments’ she says, ’photography is happening in between but it’s not the main purpose most of the time’.
What makes her so comfortable sharing such cherished moments with the viewer? The answer lies in relinquishing control over the photographs, despite the potential for misinterpretation. ‘If I were to think about my comfort, I wouldn’t share my photos at all’, she confesses. Initially uncomfortable with the idea of including herself within the narrative of her work (it is one of the reasons she stopped writing poetry, having deemed it too ‘exposing of [her]self’), Abdulkadir has since moved on to realise that she is ‘everywhere’ in her images, just as much as those she captures. ‘When you belong to a marginalised group, there is a demand to always be political about something.’ She notes. ‘I think th[is] pressure is too much for the individual… If it is part of some kind of change, I wouldn’t reject that, but that is not my main goal’. In reconciling her presence within her photographs, as both photographer and subject, Abdulkadir has succeeded in creating work that is both an ode to her loved ones and a telling of her own sense of self and place. The lyrical quality of her images convey a multitude of feeling for the subjects, for her practice and for the peace and joy that both provide for her.
Surpassing the capacities of a family photo album, Abdulkadir’s work gives us a tender glimpse into the depth of what it means to tell stories of family and community, to reach for loved ones across time and place, and how nature and togetherness can help us in this quest. Abdulkadir renders this process dear through her practice, her photographs forming a part of a constant effort to treasure, share and connect within and beyond the parameters of the image. In turn, we chart the traces of Abdulkadir that course through her photographs, and it is this element that lifts her work to its emotive heights. Joy is abundant, yet precious, attained through vulnerability. For Abdulkadir, it comes in the form of love.