In the End, just a Tower (2025)
For the third year in a row, TripAdvisor has named Dubai the world’s most popular travel destination.
Fueled by the oil boom, the city experienced an era of prosperity that paved the way for a massive real estate surge. In just a few decades, Dubai evolved from a humble desert fishing village into a fully air conditioned metropolis, a place where anything seems possible. Home to the world’s tallest skyscraper, the largest shopping mall, unbridled luxury, and artificial islands, it has become a symbol of modern ambition and opulence, and the perfect backdrop for travelers’ Instagram photos.
Over the last 20 years, Dubai has significantly reduced its dependence on oil and reinvented itself as a global hub for tourism and business through strategic investments and influencer marketing. Film companies and influencers must sign strict contracts that prohibit criticism of the authoritarian leadership, ensuring a carefully curated image. In return they receive benefits such as discounts and government support in organizing their projects. At the same time, critical journalism is actively suppressed in order to maintain a flawless reputation that continues to attract tourists and, consequently, more revenue to the desert state.
Dubai welcomed a record 17.15 million international overnight visitors in 2023. With tax free policies, luxury living, and lucrative opportunities, the emirate has become a magnet for expatriates, who now make up more than half of its 3.5 million residents.
Yet beneath the glamour lies a stark contrast. Built by underpaid migrant workers under harsh conditions, Dubai’s rapid growth comes with a steep environmental cost. Its reliance on desalinated water, energy intensive cooling, and land reclamation gives the UAE one of the world’s largest per capita ecological footprints.
For my photo essay In the End, Just a Tower, I followed the recommendations of influencers and travel guides and visited the places that shape Dubai’s global image. Beyond the flood of interchangeable snapshots endlessly repeated by tourists and influencers at the same locations, I found something else. A meticulously staged world designed for visitors, a city that feels more like a seamless performance than a lived reality. Beneath the surface of this flawless spectacle, subtle cracks appear. Side stages, carefully controlled illusions that verge on the absurd, and fleeting glimpses of the workers who keep the show running, just out of sight.
