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Sony Gallery
Gets New Home
 The
Sony Gallery for Photography celebrated its move to a new home on October
11, 2004 with the opening of a new photography exhibit. Showcasing candid
images from the production sets of popular Ramadan television serials,
Musalsalat! Prime-Time Ramadan is a collection of over 50 color
photographs by New York photographer Stephanie Keith, who took the pictures
in Egypt last year while on assignment for Saudi Aramco World
magazine and the New York Times Sunday: Week in Review.
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The exhibit is the first Sony Gallery show for the academic year 2004-5,
and its opening coincides with the approach of the Muslim holy month
of Ramadan. The timing is particularly appropriate, since musalsalat
are soap operas, dramas, comedies and historical miniseries, the best
of which have always aired during this sacred month of fasting and prayer.
For many, they have become a favorite form of entertainment in the evenings,
as families and friends gather around the television after breaking
the fast together.
University President David Arnold and renowned Egyptian actor Nour El
Sharif joined the photographer, Adham Center director Abdallah Schleifer,
the press, and the public at a ribbon-cutting ceremony and reception
to celebrate both the opening of the Musalsalat exhibit and the
rededication of the Sony Gallery itself. The Gallery now is located
in the area formerly known as The Ewart Gallery, directly above Ewart
Hall in the Main Building.
Under the glare of camera lights, President Arnold welcomed the crowd
and thanked them for supporting the gallery. He said he could not imagine
a more timely or appropriate way to start the Ramadan season.
"One of the things that I think makes AUC a very distinctive and
special place is that this has been a cultural center as well as a center
for education and learning and knowledge," Arnold said. "I
think this space provides us an opportunity to show works of art and
photography that can be shared with the wider community. It's a wonderful
example of AUC's commitment to community service, and to being very
much a part of the downtown Cairo community."
Keith's photographs "capture this notion of the bridge between
East and West," he said, adding that they demonstrate "a very
important dimension of Egyptian popular culture. I think that's absolutely
appropriate and in keeping with the spirit and the mission of this university."
Keith
is an award-winning documentary and news photographer based in New York
City. She first became interested in the Middle East while visiting
a friend in Egypt in the early 1990s. She fell in love with the region,
and after returning to America, started scheming about ways to get back.
The concept of the Musalsalat exhibit came to her while she was
studing Arabic as part of a masters degree program in photography at
New York University. She learned the word musalsal in Arabic
class, and came up with the idea of doing a photography project that
would document Ramadan serials from the production side.
Keith said she views her work as an opportunity to fight Western stereotypes
of Arab and Muslim culture.
"In the West people think the Middle East is all war and explosions,
and I said, you know, Egypt has this huge history of film, and it has
this big history of musalsals, and I want to show that to the
West," she said. "It's like another dimension of the Arab
world. I think the more the West sees of the different dimensions of
the East, the better it is for world understanding."
"I mean, that's a big job for me," she laughed. "But
someone's gotta do it!"
Keith's next project in the Middle East will be photographing the production
of Arab music videos.
-Usama Najeeb and Lindsay Wise
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