Past Exhibitions

Views on Egypt -Through a 19th Century Lens: Photographs from a private collection - 17th October - 2nd December, 2024

In celebration of five years of TINTERA we are delighted to present Views on Egypt – Through the 19th Century Lens. Within months of the medium of photography being introduced in 1839 European photographers began arriving in Egypt eager to not only capture its monuments but also because of its abundance of light, the most essential component of photography. Advances in photographic technology, the rise of ‘orientalist art’ and Europe’s fascination with antiquity, spurred this visual exploration. Early travel companies like Thomas Cook, along with major archaeological discoveries and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, boosted tourism, creating a market for photographic prints. Studios such as those of Francis Frith (1822-1898), Antonio Beato (1835-1906), and Félix Bonfils (1831-1885), produced and sold thousands of images, feeding European collectors’ appetite for exotic imagery and contributing to Egyptomania. These photographs shaped both historical scholarship and Western perceptions of Egypt. This exhibition, from a small private collection, brings together a selection of original work by some of the photographers active in Egypt in the mid 19th century. The images, often depicting grand monuments like the pyramids, temple ruins, Nile scenes and local ‘types’, illustrate how such imagery helped frame Egypt as a romanticized, exotic land rooted in antiquity ready for Western exploration and consumption. Albumen prints by the likes of Félix Bonfils, Antonio Beato, the Zangaki Brothers and others, are presented alongside a rich selection of original photochromes by the Swiss company Photoglob Zurich. Photochromes, colourised images made from black and white photographic negatives printed through a lithographic process became popular at the end of the 19th century before the advent of colour photography and became widely used for depicting European and American cities, as well as iconic places across the Middle East and specifically Egypt. Also on display is a unique collection of hand coloured ‘cartes de visite’. The ‘carte de visite’ (a small photographic portrait mounted on card) was introduced to Egypt in the mid-19th century, soon after its invention in France. The format allowed people to exchange portraits, collect them in albums, or use them as calling cards. It played a key role in democratizing photography, as it made personal portraits more affordable.

Love & Loss: Gilded Photographs by Barry Iverson and Samy Iverson - 25th September - 12th October 2024

Love & Loss brings together the work of seasoned photographer Barry Iverson, with that of his late son Samy Iverson. Their work is paired together here as gilded photographs in an inseparable twist of fate. Gold leaf gilding, the process of applying thin sheets of gold to the surface of objects or paper to create a lustrous, golden finish, has a long history. It can be dated back to the ancient Egyptians where it was often used to adorn tombs, statues, and sacred objects symbolizing immortality, divinity, and the eternal. Utilizing his own photographs and those of Samy's, Barry uses ithis delicate and deliberate process as both a form of adulation and meditation. 
Presented here, Samy’s potential in photography is preserved by his father. Their shared interpretations of abstraction, the natural world and the urban environment through the process of gilding imbue each work with a sense of presence and absence offering us a radiant testament to love and loss.

Photography Expanded - a group exhibition - closed 12 October

Photography Expanded brings together the work of 20 artists that we have had the pleasure to work with over the last four years. A rotating selection of forty-seven works include silver gelatin prints, digitally manipulated images, unique photo collages and hand painted photographs, showing a range of the various possibilities of the photographic medium and how the artists we work with push the boundaries of the different material capabilities of contemporary photography.
Artists in the exhibition are: Amr Elkafrawy, Anthony Hamboussi, Hicham Ghandour, Barry Iverson, Denis Dailleux, Bryony Dunne, Dominique Mauri, Heba Khalifa, Huda Lutfi, Ibrahim Ahmed, Maria Saba, Marwan El Dewey, Nabil Boutros, Nermine Hammam, René Clement, Heba Mansour, Nour Elmassry and Xenia Nikolskaya.

Liminal Spaces - a presentation of works by Anthony Hamboussi and Amr Elkafrawy - 17th June, 2023

We are delighted to present Liminal Spaces, a presentation of work by Anthony Hamboussi and Amr Elkafrawy from their respective series on Cairo's Ring Road. Both Hamboussi and Elkafrawy are deeply interested in the unseen pressures that dictate urban land use policies and the forces that shape the aesthetics and function of cities. Both their artistic practices look closely at specific landscapes on the verge of extinction or mutation, highly vulnerable to socio-political and economic changes, rendering the decision making mechanisms visible and traceable. The photographic images they produce are portraits of urban spaces in transition and in crisis.

Anthony Hamboussi (b1969) is a photographer, born in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been exhibited in the Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, International Center of Photography, MoMA/PS1, Americas Society, Queens Museum and SculptureCenter, New York. He has published two monographs, Newtown Creek: A Photographic Survey of New York’s Industrial Waterway and Cairo Ring Road.  He has co-authored two books; What is Affordable Housing? with the Center for Urban Pedagogy and LIC in Context with Place in History.  Hamboussi has received grants from the Aaron Siskind Foundation, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Jerome Foundation, En Foco, and the New York State Council on the Arts in Architecture, Planning & Design. He is the founder of L- Nour Editions, a non-profit publisher specializing in photo books by artists from the Middle East and their diaspora. Hamboussi currently teaches at City College in New York and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.

Amr Elkafrawy (b1980) is a visual artist based in Cairo. He obtained an MFA in print- media from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. With a strong interest in the structures of cities and the impact of the built environment  on its residents, Elkafrawy uses photography as the starting point for much of his work combining that with painting, drawing, printing and sometimes poetry. His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada, Europe and the Middle East. 

Dominique Mauri - L’inédit des choses (The Unsaid of Things) - 6th May - 6th June, 2023

We are delighted to present L’inédit des choses, Dominique Mauri’s first solo exhibition in Egypt. At the heart of Mauri’s practice is the still life, or nature morte, one of the oldest genres in painting and photography. The thirty-five photographs in this exhibit, both archival pigment and platinum palladium prints, are a testimony to Mauri’s commitment to composition, lighting and printing. Objects accumulated over the years from various commercial assignments: industrial glass jars, clay pots and worker’s tools, are thoughtfully paired with everyday found objects: dried flowers, fruits and tea leaves, creating striking images that reveal the hidden beauty of the objects themselves. Mauri’s work is an invitation to stand still and take one’s time when looking. He believes that it is through this stillness that objects can truly be seen and given voice - where the ‘un-thought of things’ is heard - l’inédit des choses.

Mauri is a photographer and master printmaker of the platinum-palladium process, a non-silver 19th century photographic printing process known for its artistry. Born in Algeria (1951), Mauri studied photography at the École Nationale Supérieure de Photographie et de Cinématographie in Paris in the early 1970s. Since then, he worked for twenty years in Paris as a commercial photographer with numerous photojournalistic as well as stock image agencies before moving to Cairo in the mid 1990s. Currently, he continues his commercial artistic practices and teaches at the German University in Cairo (GUC), Media Arts Department.

Group Show - 27th March - 19th April, 2023

TINTERA is pleased to announce our Spring Group Show, an opportunity to see works from previous exhibitions and some not seen before. On exhibition are works by: Ibrahim Ahmed, Roger Anis, Nabil Boutros, René Clement, Paola Crociani, Denis Dailleux, Bryony Dunne, Nermine Hammam, Barry Iverson, Heba Khalifa, Mohamed Mahdy, Sara Sallam, Maria Saba, Amina Kadous, and Xenia Nikolskaya.

Terra Incognita - a retrospective, Marwan El Dewey -1st - 20th March, 2023

TINTERA is delighted to present Terra Incognita, a retrospective exhibition of abstract nudes by Marwan El Dewey, his first solo exhibition in thirty years. Many of the twenty-two black & white prints on show are from works previously exhibited in the 1980s, while others are being seen here for the first time. Alongside the newly created special edition works for this exhibition are archival works that tell the story of a young Egyptian man’s journey with photography, starting from 1973 on the streets of Paris with a borrowed camera to the art scene of New York in the early 1980s.

We first met Marwan El Dewey when the gallery had just opened in 2019. He was there to introduce us to his work in landscape and nature, beautiful colour images made during the 1990s of remote areas in Egypt. But as our conversations deepened we soon realised that El Dewey’s relationship with photography was much longer, richer and varied than what we were seeing. Visiting his archive of thousands of prints, slides and negatives it was clear to us that El Dewey’s work: studies in light and composition, exploration of form and texture and documentation of time and place, were an important contribution to our understanding of photography in Egypt. The history of photography in Egypt, especially the 1970s through the 1990s is under researched and undocumented. Rather than seeing it as a blank moment in history we can see now that it was a moment of freer expression and avant-garde practices. It is through time spent with artists such as El Dewey that we begin to put together this important story, one that has parallels to what was happening in photography in other parts of the world but, seen within its own context, tells its own story.

Misr - a solo exhibition by Denis Dailleux - 4th February - 25th March 2023

We are delighted to present Misr, Denis Dailleux’s first solo exhibition in Egypt. Many of the over twenty colour and black & white prints on show are from the recently published monograph, Misr, L’Égypte de Denis Dailleux (Le bec en l’air, 2022), while others are being seen here for the first time.

Dailleux’s relationship to Egypt is deeply rooted in love: love of the person who first brought him here, love of the people he met and ultimately the love he felt for the country. He first came to Egypt in 1992 and for over thirty years used photography as a way of gently persuading people to trust him and open up, allowing him to discover a place that reminded him, on some level of the simplicity of his French countryside upbringing, but dazzling and seductive in a way that he had never experienced before. Working in a 6 x 6 square format Dailleux’s earlier images were strictly made using black & white film but a chance event forced him into using colour allowing him to blossom as a master of colour photography and imbuing his portrayal of Egypt with a cinematic quality.

Dailleux’s photographs, whether of bustling Cairo cafés, spent dancers at weddings, powerful portraits of mother and son or serene moments along the banks of the Nile, stand as testimony not only to the love he experienced but also a record of a country at once timeless and ever changing.

Thoughts & Prayers - a solo exhibition by René Clement - 4th December 2022 - 18th January 2023

We are delighted to present Thoughts & Prayers, René Clement’s second solo exhibition at TINTERA. The seventeen colour prints and two light boxes; some ‘portraits’ of trees and others landscapes of Islamic and urban Cairo, are from two further iterations of I Feel the Earth Move (2019 – on-going), Clement’s on-going body of work that seeks to discover and make visible ‘the underlying meaning of what it is to ‘be here’’.

Having now lived and worked in Cairo for over five years Clement continues to show the city to us in new and dynamic ways. In the series Thoughts and Prayers, Clement abstracts the familiar Islamic architecture of the city presenting it to us in a dazzling display of overlapping symmetry that seduces and confuses. While at first each image looks familiar Clement makes us look again and question where we truly are and what it is we are seeing. 

In the series Insomnia, Clement’s use of mirroring and layering multiple exposures appears to mutate the trees of the city, turning the familiar and benign into fantastical, magical totems. Photographed at night under artificial light individual branches and leaves are multiplied resembling brain synapses alluding to the insomniac’s restless sleep. Clement's photography continues to push our understanding of the post-analogue world. The chemical processes of the darkroom are dispensed with but none of the magic or possibilities. His work makes us re-evaluate what we are seeing and challenges us to look further.

Patterns Interrupted - solo presentations by Ibrahim Ahmed & Heba Khalifa - 20th October - 22nd November, 2022

We are pleased to announce the opening of Patterns Interrupted, an exhibition of two solo presentations by artists Heba Khalifa and Ibrahim Ahmed. Shown side by side the two individual displays look at each artist’s current photographic projects before reaching their final completion, inviting the audience to further explore the creative process.

Heba Khalifa presents mixed media photo-collages from her ongoing series Chapter One - Why Me. Begun in 2019, this is an intimate portrayal of family trauma, womanhood and self-discovery. Layering painting, drawing and photography Khalifa intuitively uses art as a healing process to question, explore and challenge societal norms and taboos. This work, thus far, has received support from Magnum Foundation and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC).

Ibrahim Ahmed presents work from his new, on-going series, to gaze at a moving target and work not yet seen in Egypt from his overall project I never revealed myself to them. Using self-portraits and old family photographs from his father's archive Ahmed's unique photo collages continue to explore masculinities, its traditions and representations.

Summer Portfolio Show - 27th July - 7th September, 2022

TINTERA is pleased to announce our Summer Group Show. We have re-vamped our portfolio room and are excited to share with you the work of over 20 of our artists. Portfolio boxes have been placed in our main gallery space where we invite you to explore and discover old and new works. Many individual prints are matted and framed ready for immediate purchase. Ideal for last minute summer gifts!

On exhibition are work by: Ahmad Abdalla, Ibrahim Ahmed, Roger Anis, Nabil Boutros, René Clement, Paola Crociani, Bryony Dunne, Heba Farid, Paul Geday, Bernard Guillot, Nermine Hammam, Barry Iverson, Heba Khalifa, Mohamed Mahdy, Dominique Mauri, Sara Sallam, Maria Saba and new works by Amina Kadous, Anthony Hamboussi and Xenia Nikolskaya.

Le temps qui passe…, a solo exhibition by Maria Saba 11th June - 6th July, 2022

TINTERA is pleased to announce Le temps qui passe..., the first solo exhibition by Maria Saba in Cairo. Throughout the main gallery space, Saba presents four bodies of work from 2017 to the present day, in which she examines issues of identity and place in relation to living between two countries and cultures: Egypt and France.

Urban Jungle (2017-2022) is a photographic series that evokes the relationship between body language and the urban environment. Primarily focused on public spaces in both Egypt and France, the 15 black and white self-portraits mounted on aluminium and displayed like street signs, question Saba’s her ‘place’ within these various sites, illustrating the tension between the public, the private and the self.

The series Virtual Paintings (2020), are six time-based, photographic, performative and site-specific self-portraits. By revealing the slightest movement in the image, they emphasise both the temporal and the performative, immortalising a moment and slowing down time rendering the moment more visible. Without sound, these silent, moving photographs allude to the cinematic and yet they retain their photographic form. 

Also on display, The Virgin’s Suicide, (2017-2022), is a multi media installation consisting of a large self-portrait, a ‘death mask’ and an audio component.

Trying to Say Something (2020), is a short duration experimental video incorporating 16mm analogue film which explores the extreme condition of confinement experienced during the lockdown of the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic.

‘The Truth of the Desert’, a solo exhibition by Barry Iverson 31st March - 28th May, 2022

TINTERA is pleased to announce the opening of The Truth of the Desert, a solo exhibition by Barry Iverson. Made throughout his career as a TIME Magazine photographer and his many years of living in the region, the thirty five photographs on display, both hand coloured and black and white, show us Iverson's deep passion and respect for the desert.

"I photograph in the desert in search of the truth of the desert. It is the unaltered landscape of sand and stone and sky. I seek the landscape that is not compromised, and which exists according to the rules of nature. Ansel Adams sought to photograph the beauty of the American West in all its glory and majesty. I seek to photograph the beauty of the desert to lay bare (or reveal) its truth and majesty. Rather than eye the desert as a place to extract its mineral riches, it offers the soul a space for peace and solitude." Barry Iverson

‘A’aru’, a solo exhibition by Nermine Hammam - 23rd February - 16th March, 2022

TINTERA is delighted to present A'aru, a solo exhibition by artist Nermine Hammam. In this new series based on A’aru, the ancient Egyptian concept of the afterlife, Hammam employs her signature technique of digital manipulation, hand colouring and layering of images on a collection of black and white vernacular photographs taken on the beaches of Alexandria. These totemic works are imbued with references to the shamanic, the archetypal and the unconscious drives, aspirations and struggles within the collective self. Like maps, they are visual canvases where Hammam conjures up a magical space in which a collective transformation could be possible for the artist, and for us, offering to guide us through the difficult journey to a potential A’aru.

‘Deceiving Time’, a solo exhibition by Ahmad Abdalla - 26th January - 16 February, 2022

TINTERA is delighted to present Deceiving Time, Ahmad Abdalla’s first photography exhibition. Passionate about photography and collecting vintage cameras, Abdalla dives back into his archive of photographs taken between 2010 and 2021, both analogue and digital, and explores his fascination with the concept of time, or ‘zaman’, its chronological passage, its impermanence, and questions the hierarchy we assign images from our recollection. Each of the 19 large colour archival pigment prints is made up of superimpositions of disregarded photographs where he investigates how we recollect and remember. Visually, the work references both long exposure photography and chronophotography. His photographs are an exploration of everything that lays outside of the frame arbitrarily chosen to encapsulate a memory

Winter Exhibition- 18th December 2021 - 19th January, 2022

We're ending this year with a group show that looks back at some of the wonderful artists and works that made these past two years such a success: Bryony Dunne's Orchard Keepers, a series of portraits of Bedouin Gabaliya gardeners who continue to maintain a network of ancient orchards in the mountain region of South Sinai, Xenia Nikolskaya's sumptuous interiors of abandoned Belle Epoque buildings of Egypt from her series DUST, René Clement's hypnotic botanical specimens from the series Transformer, Sara Sallam's reflections on loss and longing from The Fourth Pyramid Belongs to Her, Heba Khalifa's personal stories of womanhood from her series Homemade and a selection of hand painted photographs by Barry Iverson from the ongoing series, Portals.

With a look forward we are also delighted to introduce the work of Dominique Mauri, whose mastery of printmaking and fine art photography can be seen in his exquisite platinum palladium still life prints, and Heba Farid whose silver gelatin landscapes of Sinai oases from her series the speaking subject, invite us to consider our relationship with nature.

‘I never revealed myself to them’ a solo exhibition by Ibrahim Ahmed - 27th October - 4th December, 2021

It gives us great pleasure to present Ibrahim Ahmed’s first solo photography exhibition in Egypt. I never revealed myself to them weaves works from numerous iterations from an overall body of work with the same name through which Ahmed boldly examines masculinity(ies), its traditions and representations.

‘Animals Family’ by Mohamed Mahdy and ‘Alexandria Revisited’ by Nabil Boutros, 21st September - 14th October 2021

TINTERA is delighted to present our first duo exhibition focused on works by established artist Nabil Boutros and emerging photographer Mohamed Mahdy. The selection of twenty-three black and white photographs on display draw on Boutros’s Alexandria Revisited 1997-2001 series and Mahdy’s Animals Family 2018 series, both works done in and around Alexandria.

Group show, ‘Familiar Faces’, 21st April, 2021

Please join us at the gallery for our Spring group show, ‘Familiar Faces’. This exhibition celebrates people and faces we have missed seeing over the past year. From 19th century studio portraits by the Zangaki Brothers to the contemplative self-portraits made by Heba Khalifa during the Arab spring and from anonymous vintage images from the 1940s -1960s to more recent works by Sara Sallam and Roger Anis. Also on show are works by Bernard Guillot, Barry Iverson and Nabil Boutros.

René Clement, ‘I Feel The Earth Move’, 19th December, 2020 - 2nd March, 2021

TINTERA is delighted to present I Feel The Earth Move, the first solo exhibition by artist René Clement. The selection of thirty-six black and white photographs on display draw from three different series Clement has worked on since relocating to Egypt from New York in 2018: Passage, Maadi Nights and Transformer.

While in New York Clement began creating a series of mural-like composite photographs he calls ‘Time-scapes’. These large urban panoramas shot over days, weeks and sometimes months, became the chosen photographic approach for much of his work. Clement’s goal was to “capture the energy in the sea of movement surrounding the buildings, and transfer that frenetic, churning energy onto a planar surface, using time as the fourth dimension, creating multiple layers of [simultaneous] reality”. Clement continues to use this approach when looking at Egypt, whether through the ritualistic landscapes of pyramid fields at Giza and Sakkara, the pulsating dense garden-like neighbourhood of Maadi at night, or the everyday houseplant transforming into intimate ‘portrait sitters’ during periods of confinement due to the lockdown. Clement creates ‘landscapes’ that pulsate with an energy that is palpable. The spatial and physical dimensions of this work vibrate with an insistence to discover the underlying meaning of what it is to ‘be here’.

These extraordinary photographs act as gateways to a ‘meta-physical’ exploration beneath the surface of seemingly familiar sites, spaces and objects.

Xenia Nikolskaya, ‘DUST: Past & Present’, 20th September - 19th November, 2020

Tintera is delighted to present DUST: Past & Present, a solo exhibition by Xenia Nikolskaya. The twenty-seven colour photographs on view, an exploration of abandoned colonial-era buildings in Egypt, include and build upon images from the series DUST, a body of work Nikolskaya completed in 2011 and published as a book, DUST: Egypt’s Forgotten Architecture. The exhibition DUST: Past & Present includes several images taken after 2011 that are seen here for the first time.

Bernard Guillot, ‘BEYOND’, 9th February - 2nd April, 2020

Tintera is pleased to present ‘Beyond’, the first survey exhibition of Bernard Guillot’s Egyptian photographs. The 38 mostly silver gelatin prints, some of which are hand painted, come from the many different series that Guillot has made during his 45 years living in Cairo.

Guillot’s personal relationship to Egypt, a place he now considers home, has inspired much of his work. In it he sees beyond the heat and dust, beyond time and place, and beyond the expected and pre-conceived. He has approached Egypt not as a country to be ‘discovered’ but as a canvas upon which to explore the metaphysical, a place that has allowed him to question and respond to ‘what is there’ and ‘what it is like to be there’.

In many of the works in this exhibition Guillot combines photography with painting. Using Chinese ink, he paints onto the silver gelatin print, confusing and interfering with the original image, as if that which is present but not visible in the external world has broken through to the surface. It is this understanding of reality as being more than the present, the seen or the known that informs much of Guillot’s works. 

‘Autumn Exhibition’, 6th November - 28th January, 2020

We are delighted to announce the opening of our Autumn Exhibition, a group show that departs from the expected in that viewers will experience a salon style thematic presentation of the photographic pieces. By building associations between common and different strategies in the works shown, their juxtaposition allows for a more in-depth reading of the various concepts of each work and each artist’s approach.

Works by the following artists will be on view and available for acquisition exclusively at the gallery: Ibrahim Ahmed, Nabil Boutros, René Clement, Paola Crociani, David Degner, Bryony Dunne, Paul Geday, Bernard Guillot, Barry Iverson, Huda Lutfi & Xenia Nikolskaya. Additional works on view by Sara Sallam and Attaya Gaddis.

Barry Iverson ‘The Tour’, 18th June - 8th October, 2019

Tintera is delighted to mark the official opening of their Zamalek gallery with a solo presentation of Barry Iverson’s The Tour. The Tour is an attempt to provoke and inquire further into the persistent image of and desire for the ‘Orient’ in our collective imagination. Through a series of photographic images, Iverson takes viewers on a visual quest for knowledge of the Orient, the historical truths, reluctant dreams, and overlapping times of being there. With Egypt and the Levant as magnetic focal points for Iverson, the series creates a quiet yet unsettling relationship between past and present, inhabitants and spaces, locals and visitors. Iverson’s work documents the fantastical nature of what were once real figures living in real times against the backdrop of enduring historical spaces that he encounters. The Tour offers a vibrant commentary on past dreams and lives we have inherited in the present. Iverson’s juxtaposition of found images with his own photography obliges viewers to reconsider these seemingly old spaces and figures within them. Spread throughout the gallery, the exhibition will showcase more than thirty-five black and white archival pigment prints and a selection of hand coloured photographs. An oversized, handmade 2 photographic album, in the tradition of the photographic tomes of the 19th century, something Iverson is passionate about and containing more from the series, will be displayed alongside original early travel and architectural photographs of Egypt by J.P Sebah, Francis Frith, Andreas Reiser, Gabriel Lekegian, Alexandre Brignoli and Bonfils amongst others. Additional black and white and hand-colored works will also be on display in clamshell presentation cases. The artist along with curators Zein Khalifa and Heba Farid invite us to look at such works not as nostalgic imagery of historical ruins or remnants of the past, but as documents of our own life history that we presently inhabit in the form of dreams, fantasies, memories and souvenirs.

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