DESCRIPTION

Being such a scarce resource, water became the focus of architecture in the Gulf starting in the 1960s. Iconic in their shape, like mushrooms on a martian landscape, the water towers designed by Swedish architect Sune Lindstrom were photographed by me in 1985 using my very first film camera. By chance, I came across these photographs shot with Kodak film with my Canon AE-1 only recently. Although structurally unchanged, over the years the towers became subjected to a paint job that has given them stripes and changed their appearance, making them seem like zebras in the desert. Few remember their original simplicity; my research yielded only one other photograph of what they looked like in their original state. It is only now that I realize the rarity of this image.