Wednesday, 25 January 2017, 7:30pm

A Window That Isn't There is a solo photography exhibition opening on February 1 2017 at Allpress Studio, Auckland.

A Window That Isn't There, Allpress Studio, 1 - 10 February

After booking a one-way flight to Kabul, Afghanistan, Joe Dowling spent a year living and working throughout the Middle East as war, uncertainty and carnage unfolded around him. A Window That Isn’t There is a retrospective of his work from this period and was shot primarily on black- and-white 35mm film in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq.

The photographs, processed in back alley Iraqi photo labs, weave a narrative of his first-hand experiences of war and normalcy — coexisting in some of the world’s oldest and most tested civilisations.

A Window That Isn’t There explores life in the Middle East from the perspective of an outsider, from the frontline to the tea house in a time of severe unrest as Da’esh (ISIS) cut swathes across the region.

BIO
Joe Dowling (b.1987) is from Auckland, New Zealand. He has a background in commercial photography and is the co-founder of Paper Pirates photography exhibitions.

In 2014, Dowling left commercial photography behind to explore documentary work in the Middle East. He lived in the region for over a year — primarily in Erbil, Iraq — working as a high school teacher to sustain his photographic project as the freshly-ignited civil wars ensued around him.

After leaving Iraq, he moved to Amsterdam where he worked as a gallery technician at Foam Photography Museum.

Having recently returned to New Zealand, Dowling is now Managing Director of Roaring Fork, a design studio based on K road, and continues to shoot and work on a number of photographic projects.