Documentary photography, text, 2014

The project is a series of documentary photographs accompanied by a story-text tackling the closure of Tahrir metro Station in 2014, the heart and main vein for Cairo. The closure come as a security precautions and lasted for around 18 months which strongly resonated in the whole city changing its routes and regular passes and destinations. The photos are an observation to the unspoken struggle of drawing graffiti by the protestors and removing it quick by the regime represented in the cleaning workers inside the station, such endless contest reflects an image to the political changes that followed quickly in Egypt since the 2011 uprising.
On the other hand the text is a trail to imagine the empty station abandoned in complete darkness., where it was once the destination of thousands, lying underneath Tahrir Square where 2011 revolution sparks. It also tries to create a correspondent image of the challenges of photography in Egypt and its complicated relation with the higher interests of the country.

Exhibitions: 

- Roznama 3, Medrar for contemporary art, Cairo, 2014
- Kevat Egyptisa, Jyvaskyla, 2015

Paragraph #2

What disappears does not cease to exist.

The walls of the Tahrir underground metro station consist of rectangular brown and white tiles that form Pharaonic faces and images. If you’re beside the face of Horus, then you must be going in the direction of the bus station exit. And if you’re beside the great Nefertiti, then you’re going in the direction of the Tahrir central bureaucratic headquarters, al-mugamma‘. In order to easily decipher these images, distance yourself the full width of the underground tunnel, and stand directly before them. Take a few steps to the left or right. Now you can see them clearly, for their forms in reality are not as they appear in photographs.

What disappears does not cease to exist. 

Images create an immortal city, a city of clay that’s formed and ever re-formed. 

Its revolution is on its walls.