It is good to see the art of photography gaining ground in the galleries in Egypt. Last January Masr Gallery hosted Abdel-Hakim Mustafa, while this week Ubuntu Gallery shows the work of four photographers under the title Through the Lens.
On the way in Eucalyptus, a 72 x 100 cm yellow and pink portrait of a young woman by Natasha Younan, is flanked by 12 28 x 21.5 cm prints of dried flowers, what Younan likes to call “scanography”. Younan is an internationally featured fashion photographer who also practices art photography, and in the latter capacity – as in her equally nostalgic show Girl in the Sea – she tends to focus on signs and symbols, seeking out discarded objects and the connection between the human figure and the landscape.
Photojournalist and filmmaker Jonathan Rashad shows documentary pictures covering 12 years from the 2011 revolution to the present, and including his record of the National Geographic Nile expedition from Lake Tana to Domiat. Rashad manages to convey the beauty of people along with their suffering: pride, resilience and joy alongside malnutrition and difficult living conditions. Four teenage friends dancing about on three bare mattresses; a stately old lady, red-clad, in a red chair with a green facade in the background: this is classic colour photography at its best.
The Lebanese photographer Raymond Khalife, who has lived in Egypt since 1987 and works in the hotel business, uncovers the magic underneath the surface of daily life. In a black and white diptych from 2016 entitled “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose” and “The game”, an old man at a traditional cafe is waiting alone at the table, then engaged with his partner in a game of backgammon. In powerful colour, a very old man’s hands reveal two rings with blue stones, while Happiness shows the idyllic scene of a little girl running outside a rural house with the word Allah painted on the facade.
Malak Kabbani’s Iman versus Khufu, a 50 x 50 cm monochromatic print, depicts an elegant woman with a short dress and half boots trying to push one of the huge rocks forming the ancient monument: light vs. heavy, old vs. new, and life vs. stone all feed into the same explosive binary. A larger print, My City of God and Satellite TV, features two church towers intersecting with numerous satellite dishes. Born in Cairo in 1993, Kabbani is an Egyptian-German artist and graduate of London’s Central Saint Martins. Her career started with painting, but after a few years she settled on photography as her primary medium.
It is a small image by Kabbani – of intersecting desert tracks, mimicking the paths of the four artist, both alike and different – that seems to sum up the rich experience, undermined only by the lack of sufficient space between the displays to avoid sensory overload.
The exhibition is open till 23 May.
A version of this article appears in print in the 11 May, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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