Al-Aziziyah, Saudi Arabia. Close to the Jordanian border, the valley has been selected as a tourist attraction. Infrastructures are being built in a rush, and manpower is imported on a massive scale. The Al-Aziziyah district is home to many of these employees, whose living space is built at the same time as the city itself. Al-Aziziyah didn’t exist a few years ago. This place is a product of the kingdom’s reorganization, which began around ten years ago. After big cities, this redevelopment is now extending to the countryside, which is not prepared for a massive population influx from the capital.

Here, it was the absence of any document, cadastral plan, or legal evidence that triggered my interest in this medium-sized town, born of an arbitrary plan in this desert valley—a neighborhood where absolutely no town planning exists. Most of the houses are empty or in a constant state of construction. I try to focus on the question of place and non-place, to define them through the photographic act. This work seeks to continue a deeper interest in the architecture of Middle Eastern non-places. It’s no longer a question of rendering places as they are. It’s about showing the reality of these places, even the reality without the idea of a place. To show its factuality.

Gaëtan Soerensen (b. 1993, France) is a photographer who studied cinema at the University of Strasbourg and photography at the École Supérieure des Arts le Septantecinq (Belgium), and who graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles (France) in 2022. He is currently completing research and creative work on the Palestinian territories (West Bank).