In 2026, photography marks its bicentenary – yet in the age of AI, image-making has never been more challenged. Hussain AlMoosawi, Emirati photographer and Mona Algwaiz, Saudi Artificial Intelligence digital artist, bring their creative talent to Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Made of Makers™ programme. In their commissioned series, Hussain AlMoosawi’s photographs capture traditional Middle Eastern design codes – from architecture and ornament to urban details – which Mona Algwaiz then projects into speculative, futuristic environments through her digital practice.

The Made of Makers™ programme draws a parallel between the worlds of horology and art, fostering collaborations with artists, designers, and craftsmen from disciplines outside watchmaking, who share the Maison’s values of creativity, expertise, and precision. The programme challenges the perception of classical arts as static or bound to the past, instead emphasising their continuous reinvention and honouring them as a leading source of creativity today. Just as today’s classics were once seen as radical at their inception, the Made of Makers™ programme explores how traditional forms and techniques can be reinvented through new materials and media, offering a fresh perspective on the dialogue between past and present. Like the watchmakers of La Grande Maison, these artists respect tradition as a foundation for creativity, while pushing boundaries and exploring new horizons, highlighting how both watchmaking and classical art express human creativity, reflect the culture of an era and trigger emotions.

To date, the Made of Makers™ community has embraced the worlds of contemporary visual art, gastronomy, music and perfumery – with artists including Zimoun (Switzerland), Michael Murphy (USA), Guillaume Marmin (France), lettering artist Alex Trochut (Spain/USA), pastry chef Nina Métayer (France), mixologist Matthias Giroud (France), digital media artist Yiyun Kang (Korea), musician TØKIO M¥ERS (UK), multi-media artist Brendi Wedinger (USA), Chef Himanshu Saini (India), street light-painter Roy Wang (China), architect Abdalla Almulla (UAE), perfumer Nicolas Bonneville (France), designer Khalid Shafar (UAE), chef-chocolatier Mathieu Davoine (France/Switzerland), and animation film director Jackie Wang (China) and webcomic designer Lily May Catan/Olivecoat (Philippines). This new collaboration with Hussain AlMoosawi and Mona Algwaiz (UAE) adds the interpretation of photography to the Made of Makers^TM portfolio.

Photography stands here as a point of origin: a medium of observation that captures real places, architectural forms and lived environments, anchoring memory in the present. From these tangible fragments of reality, a second layer of creation unfolds.

Through AI-assisted digital practices, the image is not altered or replaced, but expanded. It becomes immersive: no longer a surface to be viewed, but a space to be entered. Architecture stretches beyond its physical limits, time folds into itself, and familiar forms are projected into speculative futures.

This process gives rise to what the artists describe as immersive picturing: an approach where photography evolves into a layered visual experience, constructed across time. The future does not erase the past; it grows from it. Past, present and future coexist within a single visual continuum, mirroring the Maison’s watchmaking philosophy – one in which heritage is not preserved in stasis, but continuously reimagined.

An Emirati multidisciplinary creative, Hussain AlMoosawi brings over 20 years of experience across design, photography, and visual journalism. Over the course of his career, he kept pursuing an ongoing quest to rediscover the UAE’s urban landscapes, systematically documenting its often-overlooked modern architecture.

A Saudi engineer and digital artist, Mona Algwaiz explores the intersection of artificial intelligence, cultural heritage, and speculative design. Through her practice, she reimagines landscapes, architectural forms, and collective memory, transforming familiar environments into futuristic visual narratives. She develops her practice at the crossroads of technology, design, and cultural storytelling, reshaping Saudi Arabia’s built and natural environments into new futures.

With ‘Bridge in Time’, Hussain AlMoosawi and Mona Algwaiz give a new perspective to the 8^th art by creating immersive compositions where past and future flow into one another. By confronting archival motifs with imagined cityscapes, their work stages a dialogue between continuity and transformation: how can cultural heritage be preserved while embracing innovation and new tools such as AI? This echoes the mission of the Maison: to protect an identity built over two centuries while continuously reinventing its forms, materials and techniques. The result is a set of composite images where past and future coexist within the same visual plane.