Ayesha Malik had a pretty idyllic childhood. She spent her days biking down tree-lined streets past green lawns and modest houses, going to softball practice. It would have been fairly standard Norman Rockwell Americana — if it hadn’t taken place in an enclosed compound in Saudi Arabia operated by the world’s largest oil company.
Ms. Malik, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, grew up in Dhahran Camp, a 22.5-square-mile gated community first developed for the American employees of the Arabian American Oil Company, now the state-owned behemoth Saudi Aramco. Today, in addition to housing more than 11,000 employees and their families from all over the world, Dhahran is the location of the company’s worldwide headquarters. While that means Dhahran exists, at its core, to facilitate the daily extraction of millions of barrels of oil, to a young Ms. Malik, that mission was largely invisible and irrelevant. Dhahran was simply the place she called home.
“It just felt like my normal,” Ms. Malik said.
In 2011, however, when Ms. Malik’s father retired from Saudi Aramco, she was inspired to take a closer look at Dhahran with the benefit of age and an emerging artistic sensibility. A photography student at Parsons the New School of Design in New York City at the time, she returned to her hometown to examine the beguiling abnormality beneath the surface of the familiar. She went back several more times in 2016, commuting from her parents’ new home in Riyadh, to make photographs for her book, “ARAMCO: Above the Oil Fields,” which Daylight will publish in August.
“I spent a lot of time after college really reminiscing about being a kid there and feeling attached and not knowing how to let it go,” she said.
Her take on Dhahran shows it as not quite Saudi and not quite American. It is, instead, a unique hybrid of both cultures, where Boy Scouts in uniform, men in thobes, houses adorned with Christmas lights and women in headscarfs praying at soccer fields are all natural fixtures on the landscape. In one photo, a Christmas wreath and abayas hang side by side in a family’s home, perfectly encapsulating the distinctive way disparate traditions interact in Dhahran.
“I think there’s something beautiful about the cross of these two worlds,” she said. “You don’t have to separate it all out so nicely and neatly.”
Throughout, Ms. Malik’s photos are sun-drenched and pink-hued, an aesthetic choice that contributes to a surreal sense already ubiquitous in a picturesque suburb dotted with oil wells and tankers. There’s also a noticeable emphasis on recreation and sports in the photos, creating the impression that everyone in the camp is enjoying an endless summer vacation.
“There is something about Dhahran that has always felt exceptionally iconic and cinematic, as though it were a suburban film set,” she said.
While the book is undoubtedly documentary, Ms. Malik’s account is first and foremost a personal investigation of her own memory. The fields where she photographed young athletes are the same ones she played on a decade earlier. The men and women standing for portraits are, in some cases, people she’s known her whole life. The flowerbeds and garden hose in one photo sit in the front yard of her own family’s home, which would soon be occupied by another family.
“Nothing had really changed and yet everything had changed,” she said.
Ms. Malik herself emerges as a central character in this narrative. Interspersed throughout the book are family photographs of her third birthday party, for instance, and a ballet recital. There’s also archival material, including a copy of Ms. Malik’s crib card from Dhahran Health Center and an early school assignment. Presenting herself as a case study of a life lived in Dhahran, she said, is intended to provide a point of entry for those who might otherwise see the camp and its singular blend of cultures as unapproachably foreign. Dhahran, she hopes to show readers, isn’t ultimately so different from any other community.
“I think a big part of the project is this universal humanity we all share,” she said. “We’re all just people trying to create lives and families.”
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