Ones to Watch 2025 – Dunya Zita

Every 12 months, BJP publishes its Ones to Watch problem – our number of the artists who epitomise the expertise and creativity in worldwide images right this moment, as nominated by a world community of curators, editors, and artists.

As we finalise this 12 months’s checklist, to be printed in Issue 7926, out this June, we’re revisiting the 2025 Ones to Watch. Today, Dunya Zita, as nominated by curator Lisanne van Happen.

After spontaneously quitting her job at an idea retailer 5 years in the past, Dunya Zita felt compelled to embark on a photographic journey, one that will enable her to higher perceive each image-making and herself. “I felt like I had to [quit] in order to see what would come out of it. So that’s what I did,” she says.

The self-taught, Utrecht-based photographer travelled to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and volunteered at a refugee camp, instructing youngsters arts and sports activities. In doing so, she was partly motivated by a want to attach together with her roots within the area, although her household is initially from Morocco. “I had never done a photography project before, I just started with analogue photography,” she recollects. “I used cameras and film I had never used, so I had no clue what I was doing. And I only shot analogue – I didn’t have a digital backup.”

Zita labored intuitively and the result’s sincere imagery in her sequence Beyond Borders. She doesn’t depend on stereotypes or photographic custom; as a substitute, her nonetheless lifes of refugee tent interiors present some common joys of on a regular basis life, whereas her portraits of the kids are heat, inviting a beneficiant intimacy between viewer, topic and photographer.