Improvising photos and sounds: An audio-visual project

These are notes, sounds and images from a collaboration I worked on with photographer Bénédicte Aboul-Nasr in January 2026.

Bénédicte and I spoke about taking these photos back in November. On a long rainy walk along the Thames, I shared that I often feel uncomfortable and awkward in photos. I said that I wanted to look like myself and not like someone masking for the camera. I really liked the idea of not just being the subject of the photos, but instead being a collaborator, making something together with the photographer, at the same time. So when we met in January to do a photo session, I did what I do - playing the recorder - while Bénédicte did what she does - taking photographs.

I had my friend Syma’s zoom recorder running during the first 22 minutes of our session, and the track above, ‘working together’, pieces together clips of that. You can hear the sounds of me warming up on the recorder, of Bénédicte walking around the dance studio where we met, of us talking, and of me clearing my recorder of condensation. I didn’t do any ‘perfect’ takes of anything during those 22 minutes, so I assumed without even listening to the audio file that it would not be good enough to share alongside the photos, as was our intention. But when I eventually listened, a week later, I just heard two people working together and improvising.

After I put on the thobe that I’m wearing in some of these photos, Bénédicte and I got into a conversation about Lebanon, and I didn't notice that she was taking photos. When I first saw the photos of us talking, my first instinct was to criticise my unguarded expressions and gestures. It reminds me of my instinct that the recording was bad because it was not curated or ‘finished’, and made me realise how much of improvisation can end up being carefully planned and guarded rather than being a practice of freedom.

On our walk in November, Bénédicte and I had spoken about lots of different things - our shared and different experiences of being from bilad ash-sham, coming from a mixed heritage family, and currently living in London. We spoke about what it means to be an Arab artist or musician at this time, and how our work can be co-opted and tokenised, or prop up narratives we never agreed to. We spoke about solidarity and how that actually looks or sounds in practice.

The thobe I’m wearing in the photo belonged to my great grandmother. She told us she got it in Palestine, but apart from that I don’t know much about it. I rarely wear it, and it’s kept in a suitcase in my wardrobe. On the morning of the photo session, I suddenly decided to bring the thobe with me. I opened the suitcase in a rush and realised there was damp inside, and the thobe had developed some mildew on the surface of the fabric.

London is an inescapably cold, damp place in the winter. I recalled the dampness of our walk along the Thames and the rain on the day of the photo session, the dampness of my recorder and my need to constantly clear it from condensation when my warm breath hits the cold wood. Even this thobe and its red, gold and silver threads that had somehow made their way here across the sea, had fallen victim to the weather. Of course, I am being dramatic and I was able to clean it very easily.

I am sure that the person who made this dress did not expect it one day to be in Chisenhale dance studio near Mile End station, worn by a woman playing the recorder. I am sure the person who made my recorder did not expect a woman wearing her Palestinian great-grandmother’s dress to be playing a Fairouz song on it. But somehow, these things have all happened. And I am grateful for that, and for these photos that capture that moment of alignment across different stories and sounds.