Elliott Gallery is thrilled to present one of the winning series of our Open Call for Exhibition Proposals 2025:
By the River by Ala Kheir
A portrait of Khartoum, the Memory of a City (2020-2022)
Since the outbreak of war in Sudan in 2023, images of Khartoum have become synonymous with conflict, destruction, and displacement. The world has largely watched the city through the tragic lens of warfare. Yet, the work of Ala Kheir in By the River offers a vital counter-narrative, portraying a city defined by life, intimacy, and profound human connection.
Ala Kheir’s photographs intentionally step away from documenting the violence of the present. Instead, they preserve the city’s soul through its most defining feature: the Nile. Captured over years of quiet observation, Khartoum is depicted not as a war zone, but as a living, breathing sanctuary of shared human experience. Here, the riverbanks are reimagined as spaces of collective peace, convergence, romance, and childhood innocence.
By juxtaposing these moments of serenity against the harsh reality of current events, By the River becomes an act of artistic resistance. It challenges us to look beyond the headlines and remember what is being protected, what is missed, and what survives in the collective memory of a people. It stands as a tender, fragile testimony to a home that remains vividly alive in the hearts of those forced to look at it from a distance.
The exhibition concludes with a short interview with the artist, offering deeper insight into his practice, the changing meaning of his archive, and his enduring relationship with the Nile. All photographs are available to purchase, contact us for inquiries or more information.
“I was born in the far west of Sudan, which is very distant from the Nile, in fact very distant from any body of water. When my family moved to Khartoum, I was five years old, and everything changed. Khartoum is a city defined by meeting, by convergence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile as they become simply the Nile. Long before I understood geography or history, I understood that something important happened there.
Crossing the river became a ritual of childhood. On buses with my parents, or during school trips, the moment we approached the bridge, the atmosphere in the bus would shift. Children who had been loud only seconds before would fall silent. Faces turned to the windows. The river asked for attention. It demanded stillness. I remember watching it pass beneath us while the cooler air sets the mood.
I grew up in Omdurman, and as I grew older, the river moved closer to me not physically, but emotionally. Like many Sudanese families, ours carried a quiet fear of the Nile. Parents warned their children about its strength and unpredictability. Boys were not meant to go there alone. But being boys, we went anyway. We rode bicycles across long distances under the sun just to reach the banks, where hours passed without measure. The river became a place of friendship, risk, freedom, and discovery. It was where time slowed, and where the city seemed to breathe differently.”
“In Khartoum, the Nile is more than a river. Its banks form the most open and shared public space in the city a place where differences soften, where strangers become neighbors for an evening, where families gather, lovers walk, vendors wait, and people sit quietly with their thoughts as the light changes over the water. Each stretch of the river carries its own rhythm, its own atmosphere, its own memory. I returned to these places again and again over the years, sometimes with intention, sometimes simply because they called me back.”
“Photography entered this relationship slowly. At first, I carried the camera as a companion. Later, I began to understand that what I was photographing was not only the river itself, but the fragile and continuous conversation between people and place. The Nile became a space where I could observe the city without interruption, where I could watch how bodies move through public space, how silence exists inside crowds, how belonging is performed in small gestures. Often I photographed. And othertimes it was enough simply to sit and remain present.
Through this series, I am trying to trace these quiet encounters between myself and the river, between the city and its people, between memory and the present moment. The photographs are not only about landscape or public life; they are about proximity. They are about the act of returning. They are about learning how a place slowly becomes part of your way of seeing the world.
Since April 15, 2023, Khartoum has been living through war. The riverbanks that shaped these memories. These shared spaces have become distant and inaccessible. Places that once held movement and conversation now exist in another condition, one I cannot fully reach from where I stand today. Looking at these images now, they no longer feel like simple documents of everyday life. They feel like fragments of an unfinished dialogue. They carry questions I cannot yet answer.
Distance has changed the meaning of the photographs. What once felt like observation now feels like testimony. What once felt ordinary now feels fragile. The river remains, but my relationship to it has shifted. Home has shifted.
By the River is an attempt to remain in conversation with Khartoum even while being away from it. It is a way of holding onto the memory of shared space, of light on water, of evenings along the banks where the city gathered without needing permission. And I am still hopeful that one day I will return to those places, sit again beside the river, and continue the long, quiet exchange that began when I was a child looking through the window of a moving bus, watching the Nile pass beneath me.”
Capturing true intimacy in public spaces can be difficult. How did you navigate using your camera to ensure people felt safe, seen, and comfortable sharing these quiet moments with you?
Looking at these photographs from a distance today, do they bring you comfort and grounding, or do they deepen the grief of what is currently out of reach?
You describe these photos as 'fragments of an unfinished dialogue.' If you could stand on the banks of the Nile today, knowing all that has transpired, what is the first photograph you would take?
Your photographs offer a peaceful contrast to the devastating reality of Khartoum today. Did you intend them as a form of preservation from the start, or did their meaning only shift after the conflict began?
