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Abu Dhabi: For the past 26 years Abdul Rahman has worked with Gulf News, photographing presidents, rulers, revolutionaries and various breaking news events.
He is one of the longest serving staff members at the newspaper. Local journalists describe his camera as being "attached to his body".
His early days in the paper were those of film cameras, dark-rooms, telexes and pagers, sand dunes and empty spaces. This was the Abu Dhabi Rahman knew and fell in love with. Rahman looks back at the 26 years with precise and detailed ability to recall even the most mundane and humorous dispatches he received.
Rahman was born in 1955 in the small historic village of Eriyad in India's most lush province, Kerala. He describes getting into photography as a mistake that has been the best thing for him. "You know, I am a painter and when I was at school in Kerala, I wanted to get a book from the library on painting and the librarian gave me a book on photography by mistake. I was immediately inspired and there began my love for photography," Rahman says.
When people his age were playing cricket in the open fields of Kerala, Rahman would work late nights in a photography studio taking pictures and mastering the now-ancient art of dark-room development.
He arrived in Dubai by ship in 1976 to join his elder brother, taking an immediate position at a local studio. "The manager there immediately realised that I had a gift and an eye for photography. He leased me his store for Dh200 a month," he laughs.
"I turned the business around and within a few months I was making Dh3,000 per month." Rahman went on to establish his own studio with a local policeman, who has become a close friend.
His experience and photography attracted the attention of Gulf News: then a small daily publication. In 1982, Rahman joined a staff of five in the Abu Dhabi bureau. "This was when our circulation was only 2,000. Gulf News wasn't a very well-known paper. Look at where we are today," Rahman adds.
He has photographed Nelson Mandela, the late Princess Diana, Yasser Arafat, kings and queens and most of the royal family in the UAE. Among his most memorable figures is the late Shaikh Zayed. "He was a visionary. His pictures came out very powerful ... We shared a laugh one day."
Rahman continued, telling the story of photographing Shaikh Zayed at a parade. "I was running, trying to get ahead of the golf cart he was in and I tripped over a wire and started laughing. I looked over at Shaikh Zayed and he too was laughing," Rahman says.
In 1987, Rahman became the news himself when he was hospitalised after a javelin hit him in the chest, missing his heart by 12 inches. "I was covering a sports competition when the student throwing the javelin accidentally threw it towards me. I was in the hospital for 14 days," he says.
Of the thousands of photographs Rahman has taken over his 26 years at Gulf News, he favours one. "I was photographing Shaikh Saeed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan's wedding and a part of the celebration was a display of horsemanship. I won an award for this picture in 1994, selected from a group of photographers all over the GCC," Rahman says.
Today, Rahman walks into an event and he is as recognised by members of the media as much as he is recognised by the newsmakers.
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