I’ve been thinking that I haven’t shown any photos from Egypt, so I looked in my negative files and chose these two.
The Nargileh Smoker
I printed the Nargileh smoker in my darkroom years ago. I always liked this photo. I remember the man was happy to have me take his photo and didn’t mind that I shot several viewpoints. I’m glad to see that I did shoot several viewpoints. It makes me think that I was working at my photography. So many times, I look at my old photos and ask myself, “What on earth were you thinking?” To make an excuse, I don’t always remember how difficult it was to get a good shot. Sometimes there was something distracting nearby and I tried not to include it, or someone was telling me not to take any photos here. Or I had a lot of film and I was thinking that I needed to try any shot I could, maybe I’d get lucky.
Why do I like the above portrait? First, expression. He has a great one. Expression and having the eyes in precise focus are the hallmarks of a good portrait. Also, the tube from the water pipe echoes the curvature of his stomach. This is luck! Henri Cartier-Bresson talked about the importance of geometry in photography and here I have some geometry. I love when that happens.
Woman in Al Azhar Mosque
A woman dressed in the chador glides across the marble floors of the Al Azhar Mosque in Cairo. I have never printed this photo. It looked boring on my contact sheet. (A contact sheet is where you lay all your negatives from the roll of film on some printing paper and develop that. Then you can get an idea of which negatives are good and which are not worth printing.) I didn’t think this was worth printing, but the other day when I was looking for something from Egypt to show you, I noticed the white figure contrasted with the dark of the doorway. I thought it had potential and I’m glad I printed it.
I like the huge pillars of the mosque. They remind me of the pillars in the Pharoah’s temples. And I like the contrast of her figure. Maybe I should have cropped the rolled up rug at the bottom. It’s a bit distracting, but I wanted to show that the mosque has beautiful carpets to lay out for the faithful to kneel on. It would be great to fly over on a Friday when the men are praying (women pray at home) on the red carpets.
There were few people in the mosque at the time. Mostly men leaning against pillars: praying or sleeping. The cantor, or whatever the Muslims call the man who sings the call to prayer beckoned us to a particularly good spot for acoustics and, cupping his hand to his ear, sang the familiar call. Priceless!
P.S. After I posted this, I looked at the woman in the mosque photo and decided I hadn’t done a good job of printing. I went back and darkened the highlights of the lamps hanging above her. They were too bright and too distracting. I also burned in the carpet so it can barely be noticed and I darkened the edges of the entire photo to place emphasis on the figure. Better. I notice, also, since I burned in those lamps, that they form a triangle pointing down toward the woman. Geometry twice in one day!
Some good books about Cairo:
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit by Lucette Lagnado. This is the story of a Jewish family in Cairo and how they were forced to leave after Nasser took power.
The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany. A story of contempory Cairo, before the Arab Spring uprising.
And the classic books about Egypt by Naguib Mafouz. These are a bit harder to read and take place when the English controlled Egypt, but you can get some good insight into the culture.