Western depictions of Saudi Arabia often feature beige desert landscapes populated by people in flowing robes and roaming camels. Celine Stella shuns such clichés in Nour—the Arabic word for light—to focus on the country’s vibrant, colorful side.
The series captures the neon lights in and around the port city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia's second largest city and a stop for pilgrims headed to Mecca. The corniche is a coastal road and recreational area along the Red Sea, one littered with storefronts, kiosks and food trucks bearing garish electric displays. They’re weirdly alluring, intended to attract customers from far away. "From a distance, they have a sort of abstract quality—you can't really see the shape of the building, just these strange, fluorescent shapes," Stella says. "And because the desert is absolutely pitch black, they really stand out against the night sky."
The French photographer shot the series over the course of five nights during Ramadan last year. She was in Jeddah for her day job teaching French to local children. Each evening as her host family gathered to break their daily fast, she would head out with her driver Nawaf to take pictures. Stella sought particularly luminous displays—an electrified school bus topped with Mickey Mouse, say, or perhaps a giant glowing tooth. When she spotted something striking, she'd hop out quickly to snap a photo.
Stella tried to work quickly so as to not attract too much attention. That meant limiting herself to a point-and-shoot Fujifilm X10 camera. The camera's lo-fi aesthetic only enhances the unearthly glow of the shops, and working surreptitiously kept her out of trouble. "Saudi Arabia doesn't really have a culture of street photography like we do," she says. “My Arabic is very basic, and I wasn't confident that I could explain to people what I was doing without making them suspicious."
She photographed some 20 locations, showcased in a photo book published earlier this year. The razzle-dazzle shops and roadside stands illustrate the role that Stella says neon plays in Saudi society, where it is seen in some quarters as a luxury and sign of wealth. While some people in the west may find them surprising, to Stella the neon is just as Saudi as desert dunes.
"I wanted to capture something impressionistic," she says. "When I look at these photos they actually make me feel the way [the country] does when I'm there."
