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The Sony Gallery for Photography
at the American University in Cairo witnessed an active academic year 2001-02.
Many of this year's shows featured themes of spirituality and of the various eras
of Egypt's vast and rich history.
"Minya: A Cradle of Egyptian
Spirituality" showed the rich spiritual heritage and great natural beauty of Minya.
The great antiques of the Pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Coptic, Islamic, and modern
civilizations are to be found all over Minya. The exhibition showed thirty-six
color photographs of the sites and people of Minya taken by the Egyptian photographer
Ahmed El-Maghraby, the special photographer of the Minister of Information. El-Maghraby
was former Chief Photographer of the State Information Service and served as Special
Photographer for President Mubarak in 1989 and 1990. General Hassan Hemaida, Governor
of Minya, inaugurated the exhibition.
The exhibition "The Garden
of Dervishes" by Shems Friedlander was part of a two-day Rumi Festival, which
included poetry reading and the screening of the documentary film "Rumi, the Wings
of Love," also by Friedlander. The exhibition included photographs of the whirling
dervish disciples of Jalaluddin Rumi. Friedlander has been exhibiting and publishing
photographs for the past thirty years. This exhibition was a follow-up to his
most recent exhibit in New York.
After the recent success
of the book "Be Thou There, The Holy Family's Journey in Egypt," published by
the American University in Cairo Press in 2001, American photojournalist Norbert
Schiller decided to exhibit a series of his photographs; some were images published
in the book, and some had not been shown before. Beginning in the Sinai and traveling
as far south as Assiut, the trail of the Holy Family is a fascinating route. Priests,
monks, and bishops of the Coptic Church assisted Schiller while he was working
on the project. His photographs showed sites as Sakha, where the stone with Jesus'
footprint (Bikha Isous) was discovered; Gabal al-Tayer; and Dayr Abu Hinnis. Schiller
began his career as a photojournalist in 1984 shortly after graduating from the
University of California at Santa Barbara.
Egypt's history was also
reflected in two other shows. The exhibition "Daughters of the Nile," featuring
pictures taken from the American University in Cairo Press book "Daughters of
the Nile: Photographs of Egyptian Women's Movements, 1900-1960," was the opening
show for this academic year. Daughters of the Nile was a women's group founded
by Duriya Shafiq in 1948. It became a political movement whose aim was to establish
political equality between men and women and to eliminate female illiteracy. These
thirty-six black and white pictures of Egyptian women highlighted their struggle
for women's rights in social, political, cultural, and educational arenas, as
well as their participation in the national movement against foreign occupation.
Among the many women whose pictures appear in this exhibit were Huda Sha'rawi,
Umm Kulthum, Shahinda Maqdal, Bint al-Shati', Safiya Zaghlul, and Duriya Shafiq.
The pictures were compiled from personal collections of photographs, as well as
reproductions from old magazines and books.
Another historic exhibition
was "King Fouad: At Work and Play." This collection of black and white photographs
took the viewer back to the reign of the first king of Egypt. The photographs,
which include portraits, scenes of ceremonies and inaugurations, trips to foreign
countries, and the king's visit to architectural sites, reflect the political
as well as the social situation witnessed by modern Egypt and the magnificence
of court life. The photographs come from the vast collection of Mohamed El Ghazouly,
one of the court photographers at the time. This exhibition is displayed online
in the Sony Virtual
Gallery, which also includes other shows that have been exhibited at the Sony
Gallery in recent years.
For the third time the
Sony Gallery has featured the works of Lehnert and Landrock. "L'Orient," was inaugurated
by H.E. Raimund Kunz, Ambassador of Switzerland. The early 20th century North
African photographs reflect the particular concern of Lehnert (the actual photographer)
for the desert, the oasis, and women. The oasis is particularly central since
it promised spiritual as well as worldly comfort: the great awliya, the saints
either buried in domed tombs but still accessible, or their living heirs who mediated
between rival nomadic tribes from the neutral territory of the oases shared by
all, and the Ouled Nail, the amazing geisha caste whose women danced in the cafes
of Bou Saada and other Algerian oasis towns. The thirty-six black and white photographs
reflect daily life scenes and landscapes of Algerian and Tunisian oases.
The final show of the
year is Monda Rafla's "Legacies of Cairo: Monuments and People." In 1995 Monda
Rafla, an Egyptian freelance photographer, visited Egypt for the first time after
thirty years living in the United States. She began exploring and photographing
parts of Cairo that, as a child growing up there, she had never seen or known.
She became enchanted with the beauty of the Islamic and Coptic architecture and
the simplicity and humbleness of the Cairenes. Her exhibition was opened by Dr.
Mostafa El-Feki, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee for the People's
Assembly. The thirty-six black and white photographs, on display through the summer,
reflect the culture and tradition of Islamic Cairo, which is visible in the magnificent
structures as well as in its people.
Mayada Wahsh
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