Photographer Gilles Bensimon publishes A Dream of AlUla – a visual exploration through time and senses of this ancient Arab region. This imposing book celebrates AlUla’s rich culture and takes readers on a journey through a mythical land and a still little-known geological wonder, bringing its 8,000-year history to life.
Captured by Gilles Bensimon’s lens, A Dream of AlUla is a poetic and sensory expedition through the region: through its 215 pages of original photographs, the book reveals the unique aspects and the magnificence of AlUla’s millennial desert landscapes. , while also highlighting its inhabitants of yesterday and today.
Discover the UNESCO World Heritage Site Hegra, home to exceptionally preserved tombs from the Nabataean period, famous for their impressive facades carved directly into the rock. Located on the old incense route, AlUla is a living museum offering a real journey through the Lihyanite, Dadanite, Nabataean and pre-Islamic eras.
From one shot to another, Gilles Bensimon takes the reader on a journey through AlUla and its green oases, its vast expanses, its sand dunes, its high basalt plateaus, its geomorphological wonders and its thousand-year-old inscriptions, to only mention a few of the surprisingly photogenic scenes that make this region so rich.
American photographer and former international creative director of ELLE magazine, Gilles Bensimon is famous for working with models and celebrities including Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Madonna and Elle Macpherson. In A Dream of AlUla, his muse this time around is the rich history, natural beauty and cultural significance of this destination in northwest Arabia.
“I discovered the desert by participating in the Paris Dakar 3 times (with varying degrees of success) but developed a passion for the deserts. And this incredible chance to discover the desert of deserts, reading the book by Wilfred Thesiger who crossed in a caravan, these mystical countries, the poetry, the pre-Islamic tombs, all these landscapes, the inhabitants… I cannot describe a book that must be looked at.” – Gilles Bensimon
Published by Rizzoli New York and prefaced by French art historian Diana W. Picasso, A Dream of AlUla is available for sale, priced at $ 300 (€ 279.88).
https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9782952820660/
