Hamdan Street in UAE has some parallels to New York's crossroads of the world.
Earlier this year, Delores Johnson, a staff photographer at The National, was driving along Hamdan Bin Mohammed Street (more commonly known to Abu Dhabi residents simply as Hamdan Street) when an idea lodged in her mind and steadfastly refused to shift.
“I looked around and thought this reminds me of Times Square in New York,” she says. Hamdan Street’s neon lights, its lively pedestrian-packed streets and, above all, its incessant movement in the hours after darkness, drew her towards this conclusion.
Over the following weeks, Johnson set out to see if this observation stood up to scrutiny.
New York is a city of perpetual motion where great dramas unravel every day, she says, and it is this thought that provides the strongest connection with this single street in Abu Dhabi.
“Hamdan Street has an identity all of its own in Abu Dhabi. It comes alive in the evening, and especially at the weekend. It becomes a movie set where people sit and watch other people’s lives unfold.
“Everything happens there. It has drama in a city where there is no drama,” she says, referencing Abu Dhabi’s statistically low crime rate and the ordered ebb and flow of the city’s pedestrians moving from point to point.
You can see that drama in her set of pictures, complete with their symphony of people and cars, of streaming headlamps and yellow cab lights, and of the dignified hopes and quiet aspirations that pulsate from her images.
Here is a city of lights with Johnson’s lens capturing the ceaseless murmur of street life, just as you might encounter in Times Square, New York.
But there is also something so typically Abu Dhabi at work here too: from the adverts for partitioned rooms pinned to street furniture, to the predominantly male subjects frozen in time in their untucked, smartly pressed shirts and crisp jeans; from the combination of three unconnected words that form the glowing shop front of the “National Future Video” store to the collection of sages perched on a bench outside a clothes shop engaged in an animated, free-ranging and lengthy discussion.
If Times Square provided the jumping-off point for this photo essay on urban exploration, Abu Dhabi gave up its energy and, crucially, fills Johnson, an American expatriate, with a sense of the familiar. “I love being in Abu Dhabi and I feel at home on Hamdan Street.
“I like that I can stroll at night. You are surrounded by people but you are always safe. I like that people are so friendly and are happy to talk,” she says.
And what will she take on next? “I love street photography. I never know what is going to inspire me or where it is going to take me until that shutter clicks.”
* Delores was talking to Nick March, editor of The Review.
Zombieland: Double Tap
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Stars: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone
Four out of five stars
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, (Leon banned).
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
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Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Griselda
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Seemar’s top six for the Dubai World Cup Carnival:
1. Reynaldothewizard
2. North America
3. Raven’s Corner
4. Hawkesbury
5. New Maharajah
6. Secret Ambition
The specS: 2018 Toyota Camry
Price: base / as tested: Dh91,000 / Dh114,000
Engine: 3.5-litre V6
Gearbox: Eight-speed automatic
Power: 298hp @ 6,600rpm
Torque: 356Nm @ 4,700rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 7.0L / 100km
Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
Race%20card
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The biog
Age: 46
Number of Children: Four
Hobby: Reading history books
Loves: Sports
La Mer lowdown
La Mer beach is open from 10am until midnight, daily, and is located in Jumeirah 1, well after Kite Beach. Some restaurants, like Cupagahwa, are open from 8am for breakfast; most others start at noon. At the time of writing, we noticed that signs for Vicolo, an Italian eatery, and Kaftan, a Turkish restaurant, indicated that these two restaurants will be open soon, most likely this month. Parking is available, as well as a Dh100 all-day valet option or a Dh50 valet service if you’re just stopping by for a few hours.
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
