Every year Qatar Museums organizes a photographic exchange as part of its international Year of Culture programme. The exchange allows photographers to carry out assignments in the partner country, taking advantage of opportunities to explore new subject matter and to share ideas, expertise and experiences.
This section features photographers from the 2017 Qatar-Germany and 2018 Qatar-Russia exchanges. Gregor Schmidt's series, Waiting for Qatar, is part of a continuing study of the nation in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup. The images in Oasis, by Danila Tkachenko, respond to the rapid evolution of Qatar as a nation and a society. Qatarsis, Zhenya Mironov's project, probes the visual metaphysics of Qatar, seeking out the taxonomy and grammar of architectural forms peculiar to the country.
Also included in the section are photographs by Maria Ovsyannikova, a resident in Doha, whose work offers a unique synthesis of Russian and Qatari visual tastes and sensibilities.