John Feeney arrived in Egypt in 1963 to make a documentary film, intending to stay for one year and staying forty. Photographing Egypt brings together some of his now rare color photographs of Egypt, taken over the past forty years and displayed in a major retrospective exhibition of his work in March 2005 at the American University in Cairo’s Sony Gallery. The photographs depict the epic grandeur of Egypt, and include historic pictures of Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s funeral cortege leaving Qasr al-Nil Bridge and of the last Nile flood to come to Egypt, as well as aspects of the country rarely dealt with previously—the unique domes of Cairo, the extraordinary multicolored pavilions of the Tentmakers’ Street, the gathering of jasmine blossoms in the Nile Delta, the search for the elusive desert truffle, the shadow puppet plays of Cairo’s street theater, and the hammams of the medieval city. The photographs are accompanied by extracts from the photographer’s narration to his Nile film Fountains of the Sun, and from his essays that have appeared over the years in Aramco World Magazine.
Photographing Egypt
Forty Years behind the Lens
John Feeney
48 pp.
36 photographs
16.5X23.5cm
ISBN 9789774248917
For sale worldwide
9.99
Related products
Creating Medieval Cairo
Empire, Religion, and Architectural Preservation in Nineteenth-Century Egypt
Paula SandersThis book argues that the historic city we know as Medieval Cairo was created in the nineteenth century by both Egyptians and Europeans against a background of four overlapping political and cultural contexts: the local Egyptian, Anglo-Egyptian, Anglo-Indian, and Ottoman imperial milieux. Addressing the interrelated topics of empire, local history, religion, and transnational heritage, historian Paula Sanders shows how Cairo’s architectural heritage became canonized in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book also explains why and how the city assumed its characteristically Mamluk appearance and situates the activities of the European-dominated architectural preservation committee (known as the Comité) within the history of religious life in nineteenth-century Cairo. Offering fresh perspectives and keen historical analysis, this volume examines the unacknowledged colonial legacy that continues to inform the practice of and debates over preservation in Cairo.
...read more
Hardbound
232 pp.36 b/w photographs
15X23cm
24.95
Film in the Middle East and North Africa
Creative Dissidence
Edited by Josef GuglerNine essays presenting the major national cinemas, from Iran to Morocco, are complemented by in-depth discussions of eighteen films that have been selected for both their excellence and their critical engagement with pressing current issues. The introduction provides a comprehensive overview of filmmaking throughout the region, including important films produced outside the national cinemas. The long history of Iranian cinema, its international renown, and the politics of directors confronting the state, earns it a special place in this volume. The other major emphasis is on the Israel/Palestine conflict, featuring films by Palestinian directors, Israelis, and an Egyptian working in Syria. Twenty contributors, from film and literary scholars to film directors and a novelist, bring to this unique volume differences in disciplinary orientation and variation in the perspectives that inform their writing. Together they offer an illuminating range of approaches to the cinemas of the region.
...read more
Hardbound
368 pp.55 b/w illus.
15X23cm
29.95
Gaza Graffiti
Messages of Love and Politics
Mia GröndahlGraffiti began in Gaza in 1987, during the first Intifada, when there was no Palestinian television or radio in the Gaza Strip, and no newspapers: the messages that spread along the walls became an important means of communication. Over the years, all political groups have had their own graffiti artists. Scrawl is not tolerated—it has to look good. Hamas even offers evening classes in graffiti. Documenting the writings on the walls of Gaza over a period of seven years, celebrated Swedish photojournalist Mia Gröndahl lays before us the many roles that they perform, the colorful and surprising range of their artistic expression, and their reflection of the changing political situation. And apart from political slogans, the walls bear witness too to joy and sadness: the wedding celebrations, the many victims of the conflict, and the ever present hope of peace and freedom. For us on the outside, Mia Gröndahl’s photographs offer an exciting and unexpected view of life in Gaza.
...read more
Paperback
152 pp.150 color illus.
24X21cm
16.95
Baghdad Arts Deco
Architectural Brickwork, 1920–1950
Caecilia PieriDespite dictatorship, international sanctions, and the ravages of war, Baghdad endures with a surprisingly exceptional modern architectural heritage. This beautifully illustrated study reveals the splendors of early twentieth-century architecture that still stand on the streets of Iraq’s capital. Caecilia Pieri’s documentation foregrounds the physical reality of modern Baghdad, very different from the image that we normally receive from the media. She draws on a number of unpublished sources and documents to present Baghdad’s architecture in a historical perspective, and her striking photographs taken between 2003 and 2006 document the residential areas of the twentieth-century city, providing an unprecedented resource for historians, urban planners, and general readers interested in discovering a new face of a world capital. With essays by Rifat Chadirji, Ihsan Fethi, and Naïm Kattan.
...read more
Hardbound
160 pp.233 illus.
24X30cm
30.00