NEW YORK, NY.- Fine art photographer Ayesha Malik (born 1989) is an American citizen who was raised in a gated community in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia created in the 1930s as a home away from home for American employees of the Arabian American Oil Company, now known as Saudi Aramco. Malik lived on the Dhahran compound for the first 22 years of her life with her father, who worked at Aramco, her mother, and her two siblings. In 2011, when Malik first learned her dad was retiring from the company, she felt a sense of urgency to document the place where she grew up with her camera.

Aramco: Above the Oil Fields (Daylight, August 8, 2017) is Malik's fascinating personal account of life in this all inclusive community in the middle of the Arabian desert modeled after a typical California town with palm trees, verdant lawns, and family oriented recreational activities that evoke a simpler time in America.

Malik writes about Dhahran: "Nothing is obvious here. Life seems to exist at a cross-section of times past and times to come. This American town re-created in Saudi Arabia has defined my understanding of the world through its dusty rose-colored filter, the simple yet exceptionally worldly people, and its iconic landscape. For many, the mention of Saudi Arabia comes with an array of associations. For me, Saudi Arabia, particularly Dhahran, is home, momentous and ordinary all at once."

Through over 150 images, the majority taken in 2016, and archival materials, Malik shares the surprising warmth, familiarity, and timelessness of this 22-and-a-half square-mile place that so many Aramcons call home. Her portrait and landscape photographs raise conversations about perception and preconceived ideas regarding what defines a "home" that is neither fully Saudi nor fully American, a home unlike any other.

Aramco: Above the Oil Fields includes a conversation between Malik and Vice photo editor Elizabeth Renstrom. In response to Renstrom's question about the photographs not having dates, Malik says she sees the book "as this compression of time and space. If you were to go back 20 years ... this place didn't look or feel that different. So much like suburban life in America, or maybe life in any small town, it sort of stands still, this quiet passage of time." Malik concludes "it's my vision of Dhahran as a real physical place but also a place in my mind, the way I recall it, after the fact."

A text in the book compiled by Malik traces the history of the company starting in the early days when Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL) concluded an agreement with the Saudi government in 1933 to explore for and produce oil over the course of 60 years in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia which is where the Aramco company and residential compound was built. The text leads with an excerpt from a letter that Tom Barger, Aramco geologist, President and CEO wrote to his wife on March 30, 1940: "this is going to be a great oil company and a good place to make a future."

The Dhahran camp houses one of the world's largest energy reserves. In 2018, as part of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 plan, the public sale of a percentage of Aramco, which owns the world's largest energy reserves, is expected to be the biggest IPO in history, valued at around $2 trillion.

Born in 1989, Ayesha Malik is an American citizen who was raised in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia on a compound for employees of the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco). She graduated in 2012 from Parsons The New School For Design with a BFA in Photography. Shortly after, Malik returned to Saudi Arabia to continue photographing. Between 2014 and 2015, Malik worked as first assistant to beauty and portrait photographer, Ben Hassett in New York City. Currently, Malik divides her time between New York City and Saudi Arabia working on self-directed photo projects. Her work has been featured inTime Lightbox, VICE Magazine, Le Monde's M Magazine, The New York Times, Refinery29, and Offset, among other publications.

Elizabeth Renstrom is a Brooklyn-based photographer and the photo editor of Vice. A former Parsons student of George Pitts, she is an accomplished photographer and photo producer, and regularly shoots for clients like Refinery 29, Time, Nylon, and Bloomberg Businessweek while still somehow managing to find the time to make her own work, including an ongoing series about her early adolescence in the 1990s. As Vice's photo editor, Elizabeth oversees the production and editorial of the publication's striking, and often provocative, stories.