Wrapped in meaning: How Alia Ali weaves photography into stories

Alia points to the brightly patterned cotton fabric Dutch wax print, widely associated with West African identity but mass produced in Europe, as an example of how textiles can carry deeper political weight, entangled in histories of appropriation, migration, cultural exchange and colonialism. “That fabric is very political in terms of where it was appropriated, and the stories have to align with the politics of photography and the language around it. How do you make a photograph as opposed to take one? What’s the meaning of the textile? These are all the things that need to align.”

Now based between New Orleans, Paris, Marrakech and Jaipur, Alia is not only a Nikon Ambassador, but a Jameel Art Fellow at the V&A who has seen her work exhibited by a variety of prestigious institutions including The British Museum and Princeton University. While her installations also incorporate video and sculpture, she says it was photography that first gave her a voice. “Because my parents are linguists, I grew up surrounded by seven languages, but the most expansive language I’ve found is photography,” she explains. “Spoken language comes with manipulation and mistranslation, nuances of tone and cultural layers. But images, though still constructed, offer a kind of honesty. Photography has become my keyboard. It’s how I communicate. The image becomes both source and story, with its own grammar and syntax.”

From conception to creation

Alia’s creative process can begin years before her Nikon Z9 even comes into play, starting with the sourcing, designing or commissioning of politically and culturally significant textiles from master artisans around the world, fabrics she transforms into garments that completely cloak her models (or “sitters”, as she prefers). Alia also upholsters the sitter’s backdrop and displays it around the final work as part of the physical installation. The result is a carefully constructed composition that creates a seamless, immersive visual field. “The image becomes this portal, this door,” says Alia. “I want people to feel as though they can actually walk into the image.”

Rather than capturing static portraits, Alia capitalises on her Nikon Z9’s fast shutter and high resolution to freeze her sitters’ most evocative moments in motion. “In my earlier work with a different camera, the process was actually very controlled. I’d have to say, ‘Stop, wait’, and take the image while the processor caught up. But with the Nikon Z9, the processor is insanely fast, which means I can give my sitters the freedom to move, and I can take as many images as I want, because the shutter speed is unbelievable. No blur, just movement. I have an excellent lens and a phenomenal body, both of which have become an extension of my hand.”

Using the camera’s 60fps high-speed mode, Alia says the tech has transformed the sitter’s experience, too. “If you can imagine, they’re under all this fabric. It’s not always comfortable, it can feel kind of suffocating. Before, the sessions would take so much longer, as I’d have to remove the fabric for breaks and, when we restarted, I could never recreate the same fold in the right place. But with the Z9, it’s so much more efficient, faster, less intrusive. The process is more beautiful and, ultimately, the images I end up choosing are always the ones in movement. They sing.”

With a 45.7-megapixel full-frame sensor, the Z9 gives Alia the resolution she needs to scale her images to life-size without losing clarity, essential when every stitch, thread and shadow is part of the story. “I used to make images quite small, but with this camera, they’re huge,” she says. “So when you’re standing close, I want you to see every thread, right down to the quality of it.” And given how crucial detail is when it comes to seamlessly aligning the textiles with the photograph in her installations, Alia says she relies on the NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S lens to deliver the sharpness she needs. “It gives me this amazing depth of field, where I can get all the details at once,” she explains. “You can literally see absolutely every detail, for better or for worse! You see every individual thread, even the smallest bit of fluff. But sometimes I’ll choose to keep it in, because it shows reality. You’re actually looking at true fabric around a true human.”

While many portrait photographers favour prime lenses for their sharpness and subject isolation, Alia prefers the flexibility of a 24-70mm, allowing her to respond intuitively to the ever-shifting dynamics of her sets. “I think about it almost like a performance,” she says. “You have to photograph the entire stage. I never know where the sitters are going to move, or where I’ll move in relation to them, so I need to capture the whole space. In a way it’s more like a landscape. And if I need a tighter portrait later, I can crop it because I’ve already got all the information. I find it quite restrictive when people say, ‘I do portraits’, as if it has to be just one thing. I used to use a wide angle a lot – not for the effect, but because I wanted to include more, to honour the full scene. I don’t feel I have to now. I can be more true to the space itself.”

Natural light was Alia’s go-to when she first started out, but today she prefers the precision of a controlled studio environment, where tailored lighting set-ups allow her to curate every detail, from shadows to colour to texture. “Natural light is beautiful, but it’s become important for me to control the lighting completely so I work in a studio – a blacked-out space where the lights I use are enormous and I can manage every aspect of the light,” she says. “They’re broad lights with filters, which give this soft, even quality. That evenness is fantastic, but I also use grids and directional lighting sometimes, mainly to shape the background.”

Printed with purpose

With the images recorded and processed, Alia then collaborates with a Parisian print specialist to meticulously match the colours of the final print to the original fabric to ensure visual and thematic consistency. “When I print, I want people to see the thread, the actual fibre,” she says. “I also send the specialist both the image and a swatch of the fabric, and together we match colours precisely. We don’t just print; we reprint until it’s exact. After that, it’s laminated with UV protection and framed. Later I’ll upholster the installation with the same fabric and it’s at this point that the work begins to shift from something photographic to something sculptural.

“In total, the whole process can take a year, seven years or even a lifetime. People often assume I have a whole team behind the work, but I think it surprises them to learn that I’m usually the one behind every stage. I’m the originator of the idea, sometimes the fabric designer, the photographer, occasionally the sitter, even the upholsterer.”

Alia’s tips for capturing the world though texture and colour

1. “Observe first. Don’t rush to capture. Sit with the scene first, take in the textures, the colours, the movement. Ask yourself, what’s actually happening here?”
2. “If you’re photographing something textured, get close to the details, then step back and see the bigger picture. That push and pull is what gives an image life. You want to make your viewer move, literally. In exhibitions, I want the viewer to walk around the work. That physical movement invites emotional reflection from different angles.”
3. “Lighting is everything when working with colour. I used to live in New Mexico, where the natural light is so pink and so beautiful, but it's going to affect your colour. Controlled environments where you’re controlling the light allow you to get the colours you want.”
4. “Photograph in RAW and capture as much information as possible. You can always decide how to interpret it later, but give yourself that clarity and range upfront.”
5. “A powerful image lingers, like Don McCullin’s portraits of war. It’s not just about what’s shown, but what’s felt. If you’re photographing people, especially where cameras can feel intrusive, offer them the camera first, let them take your picture. That exchange creates something more honest, something shared, and you’ll get more authentic images because of it.”

Diving into Alia’s art 

Part of Alia Ali’s CHROMA series, this image below explores how we blur the line between reality and digital identity. Are we inside the screen or in front of it, free or framed? With colour, fabric and precision all in play, this series became a careful choreography of light and levelling.

“The CHROMA series explores the idea about what is our avatar, what is our reality, outside and inside, behind and in front of the screens,” says Alia. “At what point do we come out of it? And when do we become a part of it? Are we stuck in between? Are we a part of these bars? Are we being restricted by it? What’s interesting about this photo session is that I had the fabric made, the colours chosen, but the fabric, for once, was not leading. First of all, this crazy thing happens when you present colour in this way and put it next to other colours – the colour changes depending on what colour it’s next to. Another thing is we had to really measure that the lines were exactly at zero, so there was all this levelling, to ensure everything lined up, and again this is where the Z9’s faster shutter came in, because I’m moving and the sitter is trying not to move but is still moving. And we had to get the lighting absolutely perfect because I wanted to remove as much shadow as possible. So, this one was especially difficult. It was just a completely different dance. It was a completely different process. And it was exciting.”

This image captures a deliberate “glitch”, a painterly blur where sharp focus and softness collide. The background is crystal clear, but the sitter’s fabric melts slightly out of focus, creating a beautifully precise distortion that was too compelling to correct.

“This image is why I called this series GLITZCH,” says Alia. “Because, if you look carefully, the back is in focus and yet the top of the sitter’s fabric is not. When you have that little bit that’s out of focus against a background that is obscenely in focus, you see a blur that becomes so painterly. The blur is so precise, we decided to keep it.”

Opening image: In Tandem, part of the GLITZCH series that explores the tensions between our physical and digital selves, the two figures appear as mirrored doubles, distinct yet connected, which Alia says reflects the blurred boundaries between physical and digital. Z9 with NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S, 44mm, f/10, 1/160 secs, ISO 100, ©Alia Ali