By Manal Abdel Fattah
The famous American photographer, Ed Kashi, known for his images with a human dimension, opened his new art exhibition in Cairo, under the auspices of the US Embassy in Egypt, under the title “The City of the Dead 30 Years Ago.”
Regarding the exhibition, the American photographer said in an interview with a number of Egyptian journalists that all the photos were shot in Cairo in the 1990s, which came by chance while he was covering National Geographic of some water-related problems in the Middle East with his wife Julie Winokor, who is also a journalist.
The American photographer, who won many awards, continued: “when I Visited the tombs of Imam Shafi’i, so I was amazed to see the houses of the dead that host neighborhoods and teeming with the noise and hustle and bustle of life, and not as I expected that it is abandoned, which abides to silence like its residents who are lying under its soil,” stressing that the meditator of the images will feel the opposite between the events and feelings of joy and joy and joy surrounded from everywhere surrounded from everywhere by the cemeteries.
The American photographer confirmed that the message in all the pictures is that both life and death are going in parallel, saying: “What attracted me to take those pictures, which I think were part of the history of Egypt in the past century, because Egypt today seemed to change its features as it was, and when it was photographed, I agreed with my wife to return Cairo again and hold an exhibition of those pictures in it, it is a documentary about real people who lived with the dead in a period of time, and today the situation has definitely changed.”
Kashi confirmed that he witnessed a ceremony to bury one of the dead, and that it was one of the difficult moments that he lived and could not be forgotten, and it was for 15 minutes in Iraq, following: “My colleague and I almost died, so a helicopter was over us hitting a group of militants with the RBG and on the second side, American forces and we are among the people of the dead, and thank God for my survival from the clutches of death, and this reminds me of what journalists and photographers in Gaza who die and are targeted during their work in conveying the facts and facts to the world, their soldiers understand.
Kashi said he presented a number of photo projects with a human dimension, foremost of which are the plight of Syrian refugees, chronic kidney disease among agricultural workers, climate change, aging in America, the Protestant community in Northern Ireland, the impact of oil in Nigeria and other issues of human concern.