Young Maldivian featured in The New York Times with World Cup photos taken off TV screen

This year’s FIFA World Cup stands as one of the most-viewed tournaments in television history. With 62.8 million people watching the final match in the United States alone, the tournament is expected to break the 2022 final record of 1.5 billion viewers. However, among the millions of viewers watching this massive event from home on their TV screens, a few photographers launched a completely unique artistic movement—a trend of photographing the TV screen while the match was in progress.

Among the artists who participated in this global trend was a 22-year-old Maldivian photographer, Nazeera Qazzah.

Nazeera, who is currently studying architecture in the United Kingdom under the High Achievers Scholarship, is not entirely new to the field of photography. She shared that while she had a passion for taking photos on her phone and posting them to Instagram since childhood, she only purchased a professional camera in December last year.

To document her travels across various countries while living in the UK, she ventured into travel photography, self-teaching cinematography and photo editing along the way. Vacationing back home in the Maldives during the World Cup, Nazeera joined the trend purely as a personal hobby.

Nazeera noted that for photographers unable to attend the stadium, capturing match visuals off the TV screen from home is a very distinct artistic style. Instead of simply taking plain photos of the screen, participating artists used techniques such as placing water bags in front of the lens to distort light hitting the screen, capturing visuals in a way that emphasized the distinct pixels. When prominent photographers began sharing these shots on social media, it evolved into a globally popular trend.

Nazeera explained that as she watched the matches, she captured images off the TV screen using a Sony camera, edited them in her signature style, and posted them on Instagram. She observed that as each match concluded, photographers from all around the world were posting these photos simultaneously.

"I don't usually participate in trends like this. But I got involved because the artistic style of this movement resonated with my work," Nazeera told Sun.

The photos Nazeera shared on Instagram as part of this trend received an overwhelmingly positive response. One of her posts accumulated over 600,000 views, going viral.

As a result of this massive traction, her work caught the eye of The New York Times, one of the world’s most influential newspapers. The publication reached out to Nazeera via Instagram to request permission to include her photographs in a special article they were preparing to publish—a significant milestone for an emerging young photographer.

Published by The New York Times on the 19th of this month, the article titled "A Billion Eyes. One Shared Experience" was written by Dublin-based writer Mark O'Connell. In the piece, O'Connell highlighted that the World Cup is less of a live-stadium event and more of a collective global experience viewed simultaneously through TV screens. He noted that in an era where people’s attention is largely consumed by personal smartphone screens, the World Cup remains one of the few rare moments that commands the shared focus of the entire world.

O'Connell connected this current trend to photographers like Lee Friedlander, who photographed television screens in the 1960s, describing it not merely as sports imagery, but as a reflection of humanity’s deep connection with technology. Focusing on the artistic movement of capturing images off TV screens, the article featured the work of 15 selected photographers from around the globe, with Nazeera officially credited among them.

Being featured in a major publication like The New York Times was something Nazeera had never anticipated. She shared that while the article didn't cause a sudden surge in her Instagram follower count, comments and likes on her viral post continue to roll in incessantly.

Currently experimenting with wedding photography while in the Maldives, Nazeera aims to leverage this spotlight to introduce her other creative work to the public. Less than a year after purchasing her first camera, this young talent, now recognized on an international platform, continues to hone her photographic skills alongside her architecture studies.