Lookout Qatar

In Pictures

Gaseous Content
The inside of any oil and gas facility is not a pretty sight, unless of course you view it as your means of sustenance.
BY SINDHU NAIR

CHEMISTRY Clockwise from top: Two pictures taken by the QPS members; Qatar's Minister of Energy and Industry, HE Mohammed Al Sada visits the RasGas photography exhibition.

HELIUM FRAME Clockwise from top: Valantis Arsenios (center) with the Qatari photographers; three pictures by the team of photographers.

PICTURES COURTESY: RASGAS

ASK AN ENGINEER to walk you through the facilities and you can see his eyes gleam with passion as he talks about the mechanics involved: the strength of the pipes that hold the subzero temperature cooled gases, the bend of the pipes which might also be a design feature to bring the temperature down, the plethora of pipes all rushing towards a single tank, all part of a striking chemical engineering design feat. Who said there is no beauty in GDPgenerating industries? RasGas, one of Qatars GDP-driving, LNG-producing companies that can safely be classified among the worlds most successful energy suppliers, came up with a novel idea giving an artists perspective to the most mundane of activities in Qatar. RasGas commissioned professional architectural photographer Valantis Arsenios to photograph the worlds largest helium facility in Ras Laffan from an artistic perspective, locating and shooting details of the plant. But given the importance of this huge facility, it had an added agenda of involving Qatari photographers in the project. Arsenios was to guide the Qatar Photographic Society (QPS) through a workshop, with four of its best photographers joining his photo shoot at the plant. The resulting pictures were poetic, some of them close to melancholic. The process was not simple. Firstly there was immense pressure considering the vastness of the project and the company involved. Arsenios says: We had this colossal company, with its huge impact on society, coming to us and asking us to look at their baby in a new perspective. Though the company did not use its clout to guide the photographers or to give them insights, its push for safety amazed all the photographers. There were some pipes that were in extreme temperatures, some close to -260 degrees Celsius, and safety was an integral factor of the working of the plant. We realized that only when we went through the process, he says. This was a first for Arsenio, who does commercial projects for a reason, to promote and to showcase somebodys work, and has more interior than architectural projects to his credit. His favorite building in Qatar is of course the Museum of Islamic Art. You have all the symmetry with arabesque characteristics in that building. It looks like a simple form of architecture but the complexities involved and the use of outside light is but the work of a genius, he says. Arsenio doesnt classify objects as beautiful or ugly, hence the facilities to him were just objects waiting to be captured in a new light, and the absence of guidelines or the freedom granted to the photographers gave them a blank canvas on which they zoomed in and clicked to their hearts content. The day when the helium facility was officially inaugurated, the Qatari photographers showcased the pictures of the facility and, standing near each of their pictures, they expressed their pride in being a part of this project.

March-April 2014

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