Ronald Codrai

Ronald Codrai came to the Trucial States, now the UAE, in the mid 1940s. A talented and enthusiastic photographer, Codrai amassed a collection of thousands of images in his spare time, many of which have been published or exhibited. In 1975, he was awarded the OBE for services to British interests in the Lebanon. His achievements were also noted in the Arab world and, in 1993, he was presented with the UAE Cultural and Scientific Association’s Sultan Al Owais Literary Award for his Arabian Album series – the only non-Arab to win this award. Faces of the Emirates won ‘best locally compiled book’ at the Sharjah International Book Fair in 2001. Codrai died in London in 2000. His legacy is one of the most comprehensive accounts – in words and evocative images – of the Arab world during the middle of the twentieth century.