Wadi Rum in Jordan was the one place on this trip I wasn't prepared for.
Our guide asked us to climb a small hill and wait for the sunset. I did what everyone else did and faced the sun, watched the colours shift, felt the silence settle in. And then, as the sun dropped behind the mountain in front of us and cast its shadow forward, something made me turn around.
The mountains behind us were burning. Not metaphorically… the red rock was lit from within, or seemed to be, the ground glowing at the same time. A single car sat parked in the middle of it all, completely still, and it was only because of that car that I understood how large everything else was.
I had come to watch a sunset and turned around at the last second to find the better photograph waiting behind me.
Wadi Rum means Valley of the Moon in Arabic. There is no moon in this image. There doesn't need to be the place carries that quality on its own. Something ancient and airless and not entirely of this earth.
This photograph exists in an edition of 15. Not because editions are expected, but because some moments deserve to live in only a few rooms.
Meet Poulami
I’m a Mumbai-based watercolour artist creating meditation-inspired work from my studio sanctuary. Each painting begins in stillness, shaped by nature’s rhythm and the quiet beauty of imperfection.
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