The Al Rashid Studio in Atbara is the largest private photo studio in Sudan. The studio includes over four million negatives dating back to the 1940s of public, private and family events, as well as of local industry, politics and movements. Atbara was at the centre of Sudan’s railway industry and regarded as the cradle of the Sudanese trade union movement and of Sudanese communism.

The studio’s founder, Rashid Mahdi (1923-2008), was a Sudanese cameraman, film producer and director ,and a self-taught photographer. Following his graduation from the industrial school in Omdurman, he bought his first camera. Rashid Mahdi then returned to Atbara to establish his own studio and what was Atbara’s first photo studio in 1939, with his self-built ‘illuminate camera’ constructed of wood. Rashid Mahdi and his studio thrived and was continued by Amin El Rashid (1945-), son of Rashid Mahdi, up to the mid-1990s.

Amin El Rashid is passionate about preserving the studio’s collections, for both the studio’s legacy but also as a cultural heritage of Sudan, especially of the cosmopolitan city that was Atbara, and as a resource for researchers. For, as stated by Amin, ‘a country without a history is a country without a future’. Amin has been working with Sudan Memory since 2017 to record a large part of the studio’s archive.

What is presented here is a selection of scanned materials that showcases this collection. For more information on the collection, please contact the collection contributor.