International photographers showcase their visual experiences at Exposure 2026
Sharjah, 4 February / WAM / American-Japanese photographer Michael Yamashita reviewed his experience spanning four decades in tracing the paths of history and geography, most notably the epic journey of traveler Marco Polo along the Silk Road, during a dialogue session within the activities of the tenth session of the International Photography Festival Exposure 2026, which is organized by the Sharjah Government Media Office in the Aljada area.
The session provided an in-depth reading of Yamashita’s career as an integrated visual project that is not limited to documentation, but rather seeks to test historical narratives and link them to the changing human reality.
Yamashita explained that his journey to trace Marco Polo’s career, which took three years of field work, was not a traditional photography mission, but rather turned into a visual research project closer to a “professional passion” whose goal was to verify the authenticity of the narratives that some historians had questioned by retracing the same geographical path and documenting the environments and cultures that the historical traveler passed through.
Yamashita, who is participating in “Xposure 2026” with an exhibition entitled “Life on the Borders of the Great Wall of China,” explained that his journey following the Silk Road included 10 countries and started from the city of Venice in Italy, passing through Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, then through rugged land roads to reach China before returning via the sea route with stops in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India.
While veteran French photojournalist Olivier Joubard revealed, during a dialogue session entitled “Documentation for 12 Years,” a very profound human side of his professional career, reviewing an exceptional documentation experience that extended over 12 years, during which he monitored the repercussions of illegal immigration on Afghan refugees through a human relationship that developed between him and an Afghan child he met in the streets of Paris.
Jobar, who has covered a number of the most prominent global conflicts for decades, explained that what distinguishes his experience is not the event itself, but the person at his heart, his fragility, his experience, and his ability to withstand the harshest circumstances.
In a related context, Italian photographer Riccardo Magherini confirmed during a dialogue session at Exposure 2026 that his artistic experience is based on going beyond the function of the image as a documentation of a specific moment towards a visual approach that mixes photography and visual art with the aim of expressing the concepts of time, memory and movement, and transforming the city from a geographical space into an overlapping emotional experience.
Magherini, who is participating in the festival with an exhibition entitled “The Architecture of Memory between Time and Place,” pointed out that his artistic style relies on what is known as “reconstruction photography,” which is a technique based on taking several photos of the same location and from the same angle and then combining them into one work so that the resulting image reflects the passage of time and the overlay of moments.
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