Videos, Talks & More

'The Truth of the Desert', an artist talk with Barry Iverson at TINTERA gallery, Cairo [18/05/2022]

Copyright: TINTERA

Barry Iverson guides us through a private viewing of 'The Truth of the Desert', his solo exhibition celebrating over thirty years of photographing the deserts of Egypt and Arabian peninsula, and discusses key aspects of his general practice and parallel sojourns into research, writing, collecting and publishing. The exhibition is Iverson's second solo show at TINTERA, and presents over 25 black and white and hand-coloured photographs. Iverson recounts how his time at Harvard University led him to collect vintage photographs of Egypt which led to his seminal work 'Comparative Views", the physically challenging and yet poignant experiences of photographing various deserts, and how through his close relationship with studio photographer Van Leo, towards the end of his career in the late 1990s, he adopted the signature technique of hand-colouring photographs, lending his images an ethereal, dream-like quality. Iverson his earliest exhibitions in Cairo gives us clues to how photography was shown in galleries during the mid 1990s and the type of audiences at that time. Responding to questions from the audience, Iverson sheds light on the making of the photograph album displayed in the exhibition, and how, after more than 45 years years of living in Egypt, he thinks about his own perceptions vis a vis the orientalist gaze. This artist talk was hosted by Heba Farid, co-founder of TINTERA.

The Dark Light (2012), a short film by Hamdy Reda

Copyright: Hamdy Reda, 2012. Arabic language, no subtitles

In the film The Dark Light (2012), the artist and sitter converse as the sitter waits patiently for the photographer to bring the camera into focus. The photographer uses a 13 x 18 cm (5x7in) early 20th century camera and looks through the ground glass at the inverted image of the sitter. The conversation in itself is insignificant; the viewer has the vantage point of the photographer who adjusts the camera as the video documents both the act of sitting for a portrait and the act of taking the picture. The Dark Light (2012) was exhibited in the On Photography... at Studio Viennoise exhibition held in Cairo in 2012 at the Hotel Viennoise building before its renovation and was curated by Paul Geday and Heba Farid. The exhibition focused on the history of Egypt's photo studios and included works by Alban, Van Leo, Antro, Kerop among others, with a special focus on itinerant street photographers.

Family Photo Tree, Cairo (2010), a short film by Amira Hanafi

Copyright: Amira Hanafi, 2010. Arabic language, no subtitles

Filmed spontaneously during a home visit in El Manial, Cairo, by poet and artist Amira Hanafi, the film shows a unique family photograph collection of dozens of ID portraits, each framed individually, all arranged together in a rotating, musical installation preserved in a glass case. The audio is loud and incomprehensible. The viewer is doubly disoriented by the combination of sounds - conversation between unknown people just outside the frame and the installation itself which rotates automatically like a carousel playing an unrecognizable song. The viewer watches this incredulous artifact which is merely a family tree of photographs. Obvious questions arise like 'who could have invented such a thing?' The work speaks to the importance of family photograph collections and how albums or display techniques of these collections are carefully thought out and have meaning in and of themselves.

Camera Mayya (2012), a short film by Paul Geday

This short film documents the last known Camera Mayya operator and itinerant street photographer (Elias Abbass) in Egypt, while taking the portrait of the filmmaker, Paul Geday. Geday stumbles upon him by chance on a street corner in the coastal town of Port Said in July 2012 after having made several inquiries through local residents.

I Don't Know (2011), a short film by Paul Geday

In this film, Paul Geday (filmmaker) sifts through vintage photographs of his family while commenting about them. The photographs reveals memories that he had imprisoned for a long time but they also highlight lapses in memory and the predicament of not knowing some of the people represented in the photographs. Subtle yet poignant, the film exposes our desire to remember, how memory can be lost and what questions are raised with found family collections. Although the film is a meditation on remembering and the misdirections of nostalgia it also highlights the intrinsic value of family photograph collections, the need for their material preservation and attention to their documentation of the people, events, locations and parallel narratives and contexts that connect the photographs to the wider socio-historical record.

Image Matters, Contemporary photography in and of Egypt (2021), a presentation by Heba Farid as part of the ‘Declonize the Lens’ webinar series hosted by The American University in Cairo.