Chance Occurences.. Aberrations.. Points of...

“..Chance Occurences.. Aberrations.. Points of Deviance..”
This exhibition represents a small, focused selection of photographic works produced by undergraduate students who completed the Introduction to Digital Photography course offered by the Visual Arts program from Fall 2013 up until Spring 2018.
To contextualize and explain the making and experiencing of the exhibition and the accompanying printed materials and sounds, the mediums and mechanisms chosen to present these photographic works, the curatorial approach balances and draws associations between the present, through the current situation of these student creators, the past, through aspects of the history of photographic practice, and the future through engagement with an actively evolving Cairo-based art producing ecology.
In spite of its generic name, the goal of the course is to open up possibilities for students to create and produce art through the medium
of digital photography. It introduces students to historical and contemporary genre-based works; it requires independent visual research to develop conceptually sound photographic bodies of work; it exposes the practices of photographic art production; and it facilitates the various potentials for presentation of the works, all through a process of rigorous critique.
Creating a photographic body of work, or series, requires students to develop and maintain a continuum in the relationship between single images by deepening and refining the visual narrative of the overall work. Some images are precise, others are less so. The successful photographs become the key to the underlying cohesiveness of the work’s concept, often hidden undiscovered under layers of false assumptions and mis-perceptions.
That they have been created, or survived the processes of creation, they represent an event when an intellectual idea suddenly takes form,
“Like a science laboratory, the specimens are displayed.”
like chance occurrences from within a continuous visual record or aberrations, points of deviance from a planned direction.
Like stop-motion photography, this exhibition allows us much more than a moment to see, inspect and appreciate these anomalies. Like a science laboratory, the specimens are displayed.
In addition to the challenges of developing a personal vision, students are asked to produce works of art in an increasingly dangerous economic and political environment with plenty of social challenges and with little real infrastructural support. They are expected to invest significant resources both physically and financially to produce their work.
They come from different social backgrounds, ethnicities, nationalities and study different disciplines. They are coming of age in suburban/ coastal environments away from the urban core
of this city, in a climate of monitored social engagements and a landscape of persistent formlessness, crisis of meaning and no-logic design. Importantly, they are not necessarily interested in pursuing a career as visual photographic artists.
Some have never held a professional DSLR camera in their hands before, others have been actively shooting albeit without a clear vision and safely within the confines of automatic settings, and many more are addicted to image editing and filters. Unanimously, none of them had prior knowledge of the depth and revolutionary history of photography, ever, anywhere.
To watch students evolve and change the way they see is quite rewarding and more so while knowing that as they struggle with themselves intellectually, dismantling old structures. They are persistently and predictably distracted away from art making by their individual or collective
emotional and familial crisis, medical emergencies, psychological frailties, real and imagined physical challenges, and technical disasters.
In spite of it all, and after much needed introspection, they manage to find, or stumble on, that moment of coherence when anomalies can appear, full of potential. It is a significant moment, it changes them personally and as a true catalyst, it affects their subsequent practice and production. They develop an inner lens.
There were artworks left out of this exhibition. In some cases, because we failed to reach a graduate, or because their model did not consent to be on display. In other cases it was because their original files (RAW) were lost and the JPG version was not in good enough condition to print for exhibition. In some cases, we had to produce the work differently then what was originally produced in class,
“ ..they manage to find, or stumble on, that moment of coherence when anomalies can appear, full of potential.”
improving on or making compromises to make sure it would make it to exhibition.
Importantly, there was a deliberate decision to not include controversial work in this exhibition. Although in class all subjects are open to discussion and exploration, such as nudity, depression, social class, the #Metoo campaign, and even military uniforms, since it supports students in their search for meaning in the work, it would be irresponsible of me to not take into consideration the reality of freedom of expression and thought in a country such as Egypt and to not guard students against its dangers in such a political climate. Perhaps ironically, the students are fortunate to be able to see these works created by their peers who explore these difficult subjects, but sadly, an audience does not.
Keeping the focus on photographic practice, the exhibition catalogue -a postcard book - takes its inspiration from the history of the
profession, from the work of itinerant and studio based photographers, many of them travelling, from all over the region and setting up practices, and more specifically, that the nature of their practice was to produce, circulate and spread these photographs into the hands of many.
Commissioned studio portrait photographs of private persons and professionals in the form of cabinet cards (albumen prints mounted on board, normally 13x18cm), one of the first avenues for photographic mobility in the late 19th century, evolved quickly to a more portable version, the carte de visite (normally 6x9cm). These photographs were given as gifts, used as calling or business cards, shared, exchanged and displayed. They were always treasured. Outside the studio, photographs of the historic sites and monuments along The Grand Tour, produced in quantity and in the form of postcards (normally 10x15cm) and postcard booklets (containing collections of reproducible
original photographs), were bought as souvenirs by elite steamboat travellers in the Mediterranean, were collected and preserved carefully in personal photograph albums, and travelled back with their tourists to European cities. After some time, these postcards and albums were donated to or acquired by important and valuable private photograph collections and museums, and were distributed and deposited all of over the world.
For a country like Egypt in the briskly modernizing world, the postcard phenomenon meant that millions of iconic images of its monuments and cities - not illustrations, lithographs or paintings - were circulated worldwide, far before the appearance of mass audiences for film, television or the internet.
Regarding printed materials surrounding this exhibition, the exhibition ephemera, the printed poster and catalogue specifically, they will be collected in private homes and libraries,
eventually becoming a useful document for future art research investigating the history and issues concerning photographic art practices in Cairo.
From the local art community, recognized art practitioners and important independent art institutions (non-governmental) are also engaged with this exhibition on numerous levels concerning the production of the exhibited photographs, the documentary photography and video of the exhibition.
Other established elements of our local art ecology generously provided the sound-scape that has been introduced into the experience of the exhibition in the form of contemporary music by contemporary composers and musicians. Their work ties the exhibition to the city in an unavoidable experiencial way, recontextualizing and reframing the photographic works within the larger identity and continuum of art production in Cairo.
The alumni who participated in this exhibition were managed as artists, with their consent and approval for all the work shown in this exhibition. Although the genres represented in the exhibition reflect still life, portraiture, landscape or abstract traditions, the photographs are dispersed throughout the space and tied to each other in ways that may not seem overtly obvious.
A final note: a not so well known phrase in Arabic suggests that “organising the operation is more important that the operation itself”. This exhibition came together thanks to the dedication and hard work of a committed group of people - my team of interns, comprised of students and alumni from Visual Arts, Graphic design other programs, colleagues from the arts community in Cairo and our own Department of the Arts faculty and staff.
Heba Farid 29.10.2018 Cairo
Visual Arts program , Departm
eba Farid, adjunct professor
Falaki Theater Gallery Am
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Abdelrahman Orabi, S’016
“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.” — Jim Morrison
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Abdelrahman Orabi, S’016
“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.” — Jim Morrison
Anom alies: An art photography
exhibition by alum ni students
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Ali Kahalah, F’016
“I feared the feeling of losing my mother; this feeling impacted the way I saw her belongings. I decided to capture this essence while looking at them so I could always appreciate her breathing.”
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Aly Ramzy, S’017
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” – George Orwell
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“Every(body) corner has its own identity.” a
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“Every(body) corner has its own identity.” a
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Christina Mikhail, F’014
“Light is an important aspect in life and photography; it can hide something by creating a shadow and making minor details stand out.”
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Dana Mahgoub, S’015
Real Life Fairy Tales
“Fantasy allows you bend the world and the situation to more clearly focus on the moral aspects of what’s happening. In fantasy you can distill life down to the essence of your story.”- Terry Goodkind
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I am not like you, but I am not real.
“Drawing from cultural symbols of the past, alienating them from their historical context and the cultural significance that goes with them, I create modern lore and legends. Subcultures, personas, identities are all created using recycled artefacts and symbols.”
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Farah Habib, F’017
“I chose to portray death by the traces left by someone who has died. I chose to photograph belongings that are daily used that even though we may not know the owner or how they died, we still feel a certain sentimental attachment.”
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Farah Ibrahim, F’017
“As I walked down the street, a car approached. The driver slows down, takes off his sunglasses, checks me out as he starts catcalling. Terrified, I cringe further away from his car. I walk faster. He manages to maintain a speed similar to my pace. He honks his horn. I try to go faster. I can finally see my destination. I’m almost out of breath. The catcalling continues. I cling to my bag. Nothing bad is going to happen I assure myself.”
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Hadya Younis, F’016
“The concept of a mind palace is one that I’ve been working on most of the semester. I want to give the viewer more space for interpretation in this palace so as not restrict it completely as ‘my place.’ The viewer can see their own mind palace in the photographs; just like finding shapes in the clouds.”
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What Lays Within
“It is often hard to explain what we mentally experience, even to ourselves. This self-portrait invades my own privacy, as I allow others to see what I mentally go through; it shows my vulnerability and discomfort.”
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Expansive Hollowness
“I capture buildings that appear to betray their surroundings. Structures that seem to so desperately escape the poetic, humanistic, textual quality of the city by asserting their meaningless, monotonous facades. In their senseless need to escape everything that is the truth yet that they deny, these structures symbolize a greater aggressive struggle against one’s own nature.”
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Expansive Hollowness
“I capture buildings that appear to betray their surroundings. Structures that seem to so desperately escape the poetic, humanistic, textual quality of the city by asserting their meaningless, monotonous facades. In their senseless need to escape everything that is the truth yet that they deny, these structures symbolize a greater aggressive struggle against one’s own nature.”
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Lightsource Dysmorphic Disorder
“When the element of light through which faces are perceived becomes much less generous and far more specific, so many sides to the same structure can be explored.”
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Hossam Harfoush, S’016
“Life begins at night. Only dreamers are awake at night. Night colors are vivid and strong. Night reveals and veils, night divests and shrouds.”
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Hussein Marei, F’017
“We are born surrounded by nature and are accustomed to its known components and forms. This piece recreates a fictitious natural setting by repositioning forms with familiar elements.”
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Joustina Fahim, Spring 2017
“People are tricked in the beauty of nature. They think beauty Is only green, lakes and flowers, but the real beauty lies outside the artificial landscape of green that they are trying to manipulate us with. The dessert and the mountains are the real beauty; the natural landscape of our country that people are trying to hide and engulf a bulk of artificial green landscape within the desert.”
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Jomana El Soufani, F’016
“The following photographs show the contrast between reality and fantasy; although the two are far ends of the spectrum, the spectrum is nothing but a circle. Reality only ever existed because one day it was someone’s fantasy and fantasy is a form of escape from reality. Each hallucination is unique in its own way but one thing is constant; they all stem from the same root.”
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Lèla Ahmed, F’014
“Objects are metamorphosed when lit into living, fluid, and sensual moments.”
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Malak Shenouda, S’015
“Yes, I do enjoy walking at night. The world’s more to my liking then, not so loud, not so fast, not so crowded, and a good deal more mysterious.” – Cornelia Funke
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Maria Hanna, F’013
“A narrative told from a distant seat, through the lens of our daily yet unrecognized social position. Taking a few steps back to portray the simplicity and emptiness, to highlight the motion.”
“...it’s always been my philosophy to try to make art out of the everyday & ordinary” – Sally Mann
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Mariam Ahmed Nour, F’017
“The modern society often neglects to appreciate or reflect on its relationship with the Nile river. The river itself has a relationship with urban elements encroaching on it and events that are usually overlooked. Here the Nile river is a subject that has a voice and is in reaction with its environment.”
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Freedom and Restriction
“I have come to understand the difference between people who are comfortable with their bodies and people who are dissatisfied with theirs.”
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Freedom and Restriction
“I have come to understand the difference between people who are comfortable with their bodies and people who are dissatisfied with theirs.”
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Amorphously Embedded
“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person’s essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?” - Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
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Nadia Abu El Dahab, F’013
“This is one of a series of images that showcase me. I find and focus on the small details in the big world.”
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COLOR ME IN
“I capture the very essence of people, the realism of emotion, and facial expressions in time, on camera. I want my subjects to tell their own story, to stand out of the crowd.”
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COLOR ME IN
“I capture the very essence of people, the realism of emotion, and facial expressions in time, on camera. I want my subjects to tell their own story, to stand out of the crowd.”
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Nadine Khalil, F’017
“Photographers understand and familiarize themselves with what they capture almost as a duty to capture what they see, not what the camera sees. This is how I see myself: I don’t. I do not know who I am; my mind confuses me and I must show what I see…”
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Icons
“I am intrigued by people and who they want to be. I am able to see relationships and make comparative connections between people who exist now and people who existed in social history.”
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Car window
“Car windows are an analytical and observant frame of viewing landscapes where we don’t actually engage with the environment, we only judge it from a window. It is all about what we perceive of different landscapes if we were ever to step out of the car.”
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Nour Attia, F’016
“The melancholy and frustration lived by this generation’s youth. The agony of losing your identity day after day, the uncertainty of which path to take or who to let into your life.”
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Ranim El Kishky, F’016
“What does the subject want, think, like or dream of?” a
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The Memorial Space
“The idea of a memory is that it’s a part of reality that was filmed by your brain and stored in folds and shelves of your mind. The mind stores memories in its hard drive daily, but the memories aren’t at all the same, so the brain classifies the memories and stores them according- ly. There are permanent memories that most impacted your life, and there are the ones you have stored tempo- rarily until your brain overwrites them with new memories. The conflict between the new and old memories is based on how good of a storage device your mind is. Sometimes the subconscious manipulates and damages the memories already stored to accommodate them to the present. Then the memories are left to your imagination and your own consciousness to recall not as they were, but as they came to be in the present.”
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The Land of No Man
“Here is the emptiness of the land which was once the land of everyone. People could go there at anytime for shelter, not a physical shelter, an intellectual one. It was a shelter for thoughts and opinions; different mentalities could meet and exchange there, in Tahrir Square.”
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Salma Rashad, S’017
“We’re lost in our own thoughts, and we don’t necessarily have to understand each other’s thoughts to justify our actions, our laughs, our sorrows, or even justify hurting the ones we love. We don’t even have to understand ourselves. We can’t help but let our thoughts and feelings flow, pass like a movie reel around us, captivate us and sometimes take full control of us, to the extent that we no longer can identify ourselves as the raw images that show when we look at the mirror, instead, these images become altered by the thoughts and feelings that we experience inevitably.”
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Salma Rashad, S’017
“We’re lost in our own thoughts, and we don’t necessarily have to understand each other’s thoughts to justify our actions, our laughs, our sorrows, or even justify hurting the ones we love. We don’t even have to understand ourselves. We can’t help but let our thoughts and feelings flow, pass like a movie reel around us, captivate us and sometimes take full control of us, to the extent that we no longer can identify ourselves as the raw images that show when we look at the mirror, instead, these images become altered by the thoughts and feelings that we experience inevitably.”
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Sandra Fares, F’014
See what I see
“It was chaotic and colorful and it was moving by which was how I felt about my life then.”
“I track people with my sight, those special moments between people while being spontaneous. It’s about the spectacle and performance of their self-consciousness.”
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Diary I Let People See
“Being a snapshot photographer is to capture the moments of my life. Life is all about my friends and people I meet. Let the strangers know certain parts of my life, old to me but new to them. Emotions of people I know, I do not know, I lost, I will loose, I need, or I want.”
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Sara ElAraby, F’013
“The Synchronized Pandemonium of the World The explosion of color, complex pattern, the microscopic world of detail; an exhibition of our controlled chaos to both limit and expand upon the environment around us in all its energetic/static force.”
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Solyma Darwish, F’016
“Challenging the stereotypes made about women by portraying how those stereotypes bury parts of their souls in social restrictions. At this age, one’s identity negotiations start.”
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Traces
“The presence of people always lingers upon places that hold unknown and untold stories. A single object, or any kind of a trace can make you wonder about what used to be, make you question the lives or actions of those who once passed through or existed in a certain place, or make you relate to and reminisce your own memories. Every trace that exists leads back to the fact that someone was there.”
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Compress Time
“Capturing light in long exposures breaks down our conventional understandings of time and space. Time is no longer linear. We see multiple moments at once.” -Dennis Calvert.
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