“Over the Dunes” is a mono­chrome fine art pho­tog­ra­phy col­lec­tion by Raphael Macek, cap­tur­ing the Arabian horse in the desert land­scape of the Arabian Peninsula (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Sharjah). Shot exclu­sively with Phase One IQ4 150MP medium for­mat sys­tems, the col­lec­tion presents the encounter between two ancient forms, equine and geo­log­i­cal, in a body of work that dis­solves the bound­ary between ani­mal and earth.

The deci­sion to work in mono­chrome was not a styl­is­tic choice. It was an act of hon­esty. The desert’s palette is already reduced: sand, shadow, sky. Adding colour felt like adding com­men­tary to a state­ment that was already com­plete. In black and white, the horse becomes sculp­ture. The dunes become archi­tec­ture. And the space between them becomes the true sub­ject of the work: the silence that holds every­thing together.

This col­lec­tion marks a deci­sive shift in Macek’s prac­tice. Where his ear­lier work brought the horse into the con­trolled envi­ron­ment of the stu­dio, “Over the Dunes” reverses that ges­ture entirely. Here, the artist fol­lowed the horse into its world, into the land­scape where horse and earth have been in con­ver­sa­tion for mil­len­nia. No arti­fi­cial light­ing, no directed com­po­si­tion. Only patience, pres­ence, and the will­ing­ness to let the desert speak.

“I went to the Arabian Peninsula for the horses. But what I found was the land­scape itself: the silence of it, the scale, the way a sin­gle dune ridge held more drama than any stu­dio I had ever built. I put down my arti­fi­cial lights. I stopped com­pos­ing. I let the desert speak.”

Raphael Macek