How Shall We Greet the Sun explores the personal stories and complex emotional lives of a small group of young women refugees living in the Netherlands, including Thana. It reflects on their shared and individual journeys, casting an eye toward both tangible and metaphorical futures. Many of them are at a point in life where they are navigating the formation of new identities—shaped by new cultural contexts, power dynamics, memories, and nostalgia for the past.
Thana Faroq offers a visual and textual exploration of how the identities of this generation of women migrants in the Netherlands are continuously built and reshaped by their current circumstances and the homes they left behind.
“We are in a kind of archaeological restoration program, where we try to build and construct a new life over the ruins of our past losses. Our homes are under construction. Our bodies are under construction. Our finances are under construction. Our identity is under construction.”
Thana Faroq is a Yemeni photographer, writer, and educator based in the Netherlands. She employs a diverse range of media including photography, text, sound, and the physical aspects of images to explore the transformative experiences that have shaped her life and sense of belonging in both Yemen and the Netherlands.
Thana’s approach to photography is deeply reflective, informed by her interactions with the subjects she captures. She continuously immerses herself in the lived experiences of others, often finding elements of her own story in the frame.
Her work serves as a visual autobiography, resonating with themes of memory, migration, and intergenerational trauma. Unique in her methodology, Thana revisits her subjects—many of whom are migrants or stateless—to document their ongoing journeys. These individuals have been crucial companions during her own transitional periods.
Among her honors, Thana received the inaugural Open Society Foundation Fellowship Grant in 2018 and the Arab Documentary Fund supported by the Prince Claus Fund and Magnum Foundation in 2019. In 2020, she was selected as ‘One to Watch’ by the British Journal of Photography. She also received the PhotoWien Photo Book Award in 2021 for her first book, I Don’t Recognize Me in the Shadows.
