With its
soaring skyscrapers, ever-green golf courses and even a ski resort, the
desert city of Dubai is testament to a determined battle between man and
nature. Yet with the global downturn and mounting debts threatening its
future, it is not hard to imagine this sun-seared metropolis being
swallowed back up by the surrounding sands as a financial meltdown
prompts its wealthy sponsors to leave, followed by the 2million mainly
foreign workers depending on them. That is the post-apocalyptic
nightmare scenario realised in eerie images created by the award-winning
British photographer and artist Richard Allenby-Pratt. With the streets
and resorts devoid of human life and all building work halted, all that
remain are the animals who are left to roam the crumbling remains of
the former urban paradise and pearl of the United Arab Emirates, a gulf
state that was until 30 years ago dominated by nomads. Bizarrely, among
the dogs and gazelles that you might expect in such an environment,
there are also some stranger more exotic beasts enjoying their
freedom.They include a lion surveying the city from a platform high up
the empty shell of a derelict apartment block and a zebra wandering
along a multi-lane highway in the middle of the desert city as it is
imagined sometime after 2017.Also making appearances are a kangaroo
hopping by skyscrapers, a puma in an abandoned resort, a hyena at a
vacant housing development, a rhino at a dormant building site, a
crocodile in the harbour and a giraffe stalking the outskirts with the
world tallest tower, the Burgh Al Arab, clearly rising above the distant
skyline.Despite seeming distinctly unrealistic, such beasts do live in
Dubai thanks to wealthy residents who see keeping wild creatures as
status symbols and others are kept in its zoo.In showing what life would
be like if animals did indeed inherit the earth, Mr Allenby-Pratt was
attempting to show how exposed Dubai may be to a potential collapse.He
told Mail Online: 'These scenes are imagined as being shortly after the
departure of the majority of people from Dubai and the subsequent
collapse of the city's infrastructure. 'My main intention in this
project is to highlight how vulnerable the Dubai economic and social
model could be. Primarily because of it's reliance on an ex-pat labour
force who have no ability to earn nationality. 'So 90 per cent of the
population can never call the place home; which means, of course,
conflict or economic unviability would result in a mass exodus and a
consequent collapse of basic infrastructure.'I introduced animals to the
scenes to suggest that natural systems may ultimately prove to be more
robust. The suggested scenario is that these are released zoo animals.‘I
hope to highlight the fragility of our economic systems and the
desperate need for us to live in harmony with the other occupants of our
world.’He also hoped to highlight the plight of such creatures whose
own habitats we have plundered.He explains: ‘This project imagines a
future without people, where the relics of our unrealised ambitions are
populated by some of the species we have, in the present day, come so
close to exterminating.
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