Peter Schlesinger’s snapshots of Yemen in the 1970s take us to the country scarred by war. He wants his decades-old negatives to “bring attention to the destruction”. Yemen is a country riven by violent religious and tribal sectarianism, in which all sides stand accused of using child soldiers to fight and die.
In the 1970s, the country was divided into the Yemen Arab Republic and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. The Yemen Arab Republic had emerged from an eight-year civil war that ended in 1970.
Schlesinger is mainly noted for his 1960s and 70s photographs of sun-kissed jet-setters in their favourite resorts and for dating the artist David Hockney (1937–2026). But in 1976, the California-born artist found himself away from the madding crowd in Yemen. His boyfriend at the time, the Swedish photographer Eric Boman, had been invited to the country beset by violence and poverty for a fashion shoot.
Yemen had been closed to foreigners for years due to its brutal civil war, and tourism was almost non-existent. Schlesinger wanted to see the place up close.
“I insisted I go too as it was such an exotic and legendary place,” he says. “I carried my camera everywhere in those days and photographed my surroundings.”
He took hundreds of pictures on his Pentax camera during the eight-day trip. “The bleakness was in the extreme poverty,” Schlesinger remembers. “But the culture was unchanged for centuries. The architecture of Yemen is quite unique and marvellous, very lively and romantic. The clothing also hadn’t been internationalised yet.”
“There has been so much sad news about Yemen the past few years with its civil war, death and destruction, and also the country has been so modernised since I was there. These images therefore became very relevant.”
– Peter Schlesinger on Yemen
“I don’t get nostalgic; the pictures are just part of my life. [But I hope they can] bring some attention to the devastation.”
– Peter Schlesinger on Yemen
Eight Days In Yemen is published by Damiani.