Every moment of our life is unique. But the idea of capturing and preserving it, because it is beautiful, is alluring. Semyon Kurkov, founder of Lab Al Awal, shares how the photography business is developing in Dubai — and why film is having a renaissance in the most digital city on earth.
When I was studying photography in 1998, I was always told: if you want to develop well, do it yourself at home in the kitchen. Based on this rule, I created a craft manual development service with an individual approach. We became quite popular in Russia, working with many magazines.
I moved to Dubai to be with my family. I took one of my favourite Hasselblad scanners with me, just in case. That scanner is where the whole business started.
I bought the first model on a flea market and have been inseparable from it ever since. When I arrived in Dubai, the first thing I did was shoot something on film and take it to a local lab. Honestly, I was disappointed.
If serious mistakes are made at the development stage, even the highest quality scanner cannot save it. About a year ago, I teamed up with a group of advanced amateur photographers and we decided to go ahead with opening a lab in Dubai. We called our company Lab Al Awal — in Arabic, something like the first laboratory.
We provide a full cycle of services for professionals working with film photography and art: development, film sales, high-quality scanning, Polaroids, re-shooting, art reproductions. We work with galleries. Dubai’s problem is not that there is no film photography at all, but that it cannot be a tool for professionals.
Or rather, it could not until we arrived. When I started this business, the main problem was that the market not only needed to be captured but created. Educating your clients, you might say.
My target audience is people who care about how their film is developed — perfectionists who are attentive to every detail. One client brought me a colour negative from 1964 — Yuri Gagarin doing sports. I had never seen this picture before and did not even know that Soviet photographers had wide colour film at that time.
We scanned this 60-year-old photograph and got excellent colours and resolution. That is what eternal art means.