Last week, Tala Samman, one of Dubai’s most prominent bloggers released a series of images on her Instagram page.

Part of a photoshoot shot by Dubai based photographer Waleed Shah, the images feature Tala posing in various Satwa locations.

The photographs immediately drew a huge and mixed reaction, with some people calling cultural appropriation, while others simply found beauty in the images.

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You decide…

‘A spontaneous trip to Satwa’ – TS

‘Those guys were so kind for allowing us to shoot in their neighbourhood and were so excited about being a part of the shoot’ – TS

‘The guys were excited to see how the photos turned out’ – TS

The reaction to the images was so mixed

And invoked a huge conversation

Some didn’t see a problem

While some even loved the images

The Dukkan Show, one of the region’s most popular podcasts held an open dialogue to discuss the shoot

The photographer (who wrote this post defending the shoot), along with four others were invited to share their opinions, no-holds-barred on a live Facebook post.

A brilliant and measured way to discuss art, members of the public were invited to share their thoughts and questions, the edited version will be shared to Facebook soon.

When the Dukkan Show approached us with a matter of days to pull off Triggered we didn’t think twice before giving the immediate go ahead and support of our production team and venue. Triggered is the epitome of Asli – fast response, boundary pushing, designed to shape opinions through an open and honest platform with international relevance. As media production moves from the dominion of the few to the playground of the many we believe it is important for discussions like this to happen publicly amongst the vast new wave of content creators.

Ben Catling, Head of Production, ASLI

What “Triggered is our latest love project in the form of panel discussions highlighting critical topics that trigger dialogue, which was brought to the table by our latest member, Akkaoui.”

Why “We saw a need to create a platform where we all can come together, for the first time as the cultural creative class, to have discourse to address critical topics.”

Omar Tom, Founder & Managing Partner of Dukkan Media

Argument aside, this is a brilliant example of bringing a negative online reaction into open discussion and allowing both sides to present arguments in a fair environment.