Dania Ezz
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Photography Series
This series uses photography as a tool to document the shifting urban and cultural landscape of the UAE, focusing on the rebranding of Baqalas; small, local grocery shops that are present across the country. In Abu Dhabi, these once independently branded stores were unified under a single visual identity as part of a government-led initiative. By photographing over sixty Baqalas, the project captures a visual archive of a disappearing vernacular.
This project reflects on and criticises the increasing corporatization of everyday spaces, where government driven branding policies blur the line between regulation and erasure. These unified façades, while signaling modernization, also flatten the visual and cultural distinctiveness of small businesses, raising questions about who gets to define a city's image, and what is lost, historically, socially, and visually, through rebranding