The portraits in this group explore the tensions between self-expression, the performance of conformity and public perception as they affect both men and women.
Qatar's overseas workers have the opportunity to express their personal and cultural identities on Fridays, on the Doha Corniche, when they cast off their daily uniforms in favour of more flamboyant fashions.
A number of photographers investigate the paradox of women's public and private visual identities as embodied in the hijab. Abeer Alkuwari, for example, addresses the importance of traditional battoula for women's individual expression by glamorizing their design, unsettling the conventional reading of the purpose of the masks further through the use of an exuberant colour palette. Other photographers choose to interrogate the personal significance and public symbolism of different forms of dress via the incongruous settings in which they portray their sitters.
The works in this group as a whole are an aesthetic response to, and intervention in, the debate surrounding the evolution of social expectations and cultural norms in the region, particularly among younger generations. What is clear is that photography is able to function as a crucial artistic and critical space in which responses to these issues can be formulated and expressed.