Richard Wilding
Richard Wilding is a London based photographer, filmmaker and writer specialising in the documentation of heritage, cultural identity, archaeology and costume in the Middle East.
Richard Wilding’s work has been exhibited at the Houses of Parliament, Courtauld Institute of Art and University of Exeter in the UK and in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. He has coordinated exhibitions of historical photography in Jeddah and Madinah, Saudi Arabia and at the Royal Geographical Society, London.
Since 2012, Richard has been Creative Director of Gulan, a UK registered charity which promotes Kurdish culture. In October 2013, Richard was awarded an outreach grant by The British Institute for the Study of Iraq (Gertrude Bell Memorial) towards his photography of the Erbil citadel. His work with Gulan has documented the ethnic and religious diversity of the Kurdistan region and Northern Iraq and the crisis resulting from the emergence of DAESH (ISIS) in 2014.
Richard is a trustee of the Mansoojat Foundation, a charity formed to preserve and document the traditional costumes of Saudi Arabia. He has recently completed a book with Mansoojat about the costumes and heritage of Saudi Arabia, due for publication in 2019.
In April 2019, Richard co-curated the exhibition Departures: A journey through the Islamic World, organised by The Barakat Trust and Asia House, London. He has recently produced a film documenting projects supported by The Barakat Trust across the Islamic world.
Richard is currently working with Omniya Abdel Barr and the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation on a project to film the conservation of medieval minbars in Cairo, using modern 3D printing technology to replicate fragments dispersed in museum collections and reinstate them in their original location.
Richard has given public talks at Asia House, Leighton House Museum and the Ismaili Centre, London. He has given lectures for the Reconciliation and Peacebuilding programme at the University of Winchester, for the Department of Archaeology at the University of Reading, for the Sackler Research Forum at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London and at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies.