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Bending In Prayer on a Chilly Afternoon
Continue ReadingThere is a tiny mosque — basically an empty storefront with public faucets — located every two or three blocks in Cairo, Egypt. Some preachers at these modest places on Friday draw crowds of worshipers, at times overflowing the sidewalk into the street, where mats must be rolled out to form a continuous surface for […]
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Concerning Cairo Sidewalks
Continue ReadingA new resident out for a stroll in Cairo, Egypt will right away notice the lack of continuous sidewalks. Getting around in most neighborhoods requires learning to expect stumbling blocks at every turn. In my district everyone walks in the street hugging parked cars — the only practical choice. Directly outside your building pavement exists […]
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Giza — Deep In December Haze
Continue ReadingLooking northeast toward Cairo from the hill above Giza Pyramids on an opaque winter morning, I could see just five blocks into the closest neighborhoods. The rest of the gigantic city lay obscured by dust, haze, mist, and smog. Nothing prepares you for the grandeur of the Giza complex. Its artistic theme and layout impresses […]
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Our Neighborhood Sharpener of Blades
Continue ReadingNot every place in the world has been gutted, renovated, expressed algorithmically, and made palatable to affluent tastes. Cairo, Egypt is such a zone where you may still see unassimilated humans. This man goes through neighborhoods singing a colloquial song: “I make a knife sharp. I make a knife sharp.” As with other street […]
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Shaking Sand From Her Shoe
Continue ReadingAn Egyptian girl perches on a ledge along the Coast Road and shakes sand from one of her shoes, her exposed head still wet from bathing in the Mediterranean Sea. Soon her conspicuous hair and skin will become unacceptable; casual innocent moments like this will be forbidden in public. It could signal a reputation-destroying […]
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A Struggle Among the Street Ladies
Continue ReadingOnce a month in the street below my apartment in the Dokki district of Cairo, alms were distributed from the local mosque to widows and poor women of the neighborhood. This often gave rise to a dispute. The destitute ladies would crush one another trying to reach a woman in the center handing out paper […]
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Borrowing From Mrs. Cameron
Continue Reading“Mrs. Cameron exhibits her series of out-of-focus portraits of celebrities. We must give this lady credit for daring originality, but at the expense of all other photographic qualities. A true artist would employ all the resources at his disposal, in whatever branch of art he might practice. In these pictures all that is good in […]
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Wildlife Friends of Cairo
Continue ReadingThe sparrows living on Sharia Nabil El Wakkad in the Dokki district of Cairo enjoy a rich environment. Large trees shelter them with year-round foliage — useful for sleeping — and the massive concrete buildings have chinks on their outer walls big enough for nest-building. A maze of balcony rails, electrical and telephone wires, air […]
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Imitating Another Man’s Process
Continue ReadingIt is fun and also instructive to imitate the style of a different type of photographer — in this case Garry Winogrand, a prolific artist who died with many rolls of film unprocessed plus several hundred thousand pictures developed but unedited, and still he passed on to us an extensive body of finished work. He […]
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Found Still Life, #2
Continue ReadingI found this collection of ancient cameras on a street in Cairo, Egypt. The vendor has made no effort to protect his merchandise from the soot and sand raining daily on the city. For me it is a still life with many resonances, evoking a city of great age known for its ruins, where […]
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