An artistic experiment has been going unnoticed for decades among Cairo’s poorer districts of bare-brick buildings. Commuters on the Ring Road see the buildings lining the highway but don’t give the half-finished homes a second look, labeling them in their minds as filthy and lifeless.
Yet, thanks to photographer Salma Kamel, a new exhibition shatters the above preconceptions, uncovering an artistic side to some of Cairo’s brick houses which has never been fully appreciated until now.
At the heart of Kamel’s latest exhibition, is Kamel’s attempt to capture the psychedelic assortment of colors used to paint the balconies and window shutters surrounded by the otherwise dull gray-red brickwork of these homes.
A collage, reflective of the other work in the exhibition, features photographed balconies lined up next to each other, one painted bright green, another azure, another yellow, and yet another blood red. The shutters inside each balcony boast a different, yet equally brazen color. It’s almost as though the so-called swinging sixties are still alive and well among the city’s poor.
Granted, such paint jobs are no artistic masterpieces, and perhaps to the latte-sippers of the modern Zeitgeist such attempts at color may well encapsulate the definition of “tacky”. But for Kamel, this is a simple illustration of the human pursuit of beauty.
“These people are deprived of beauty, so they try to create their own,” she says.
Kamel’s ability to manipulate contrast and vibrancy in her photos does justice to bringing out this hidden beauty, and visitors to her exhibition will find themselves itching to get back on the Ring Road to view some of these striking displays of color.
Kamel’s favorite photograph is a close up of a balcony with light pink shutters, the wall surrounding it painted with squares of green, red, black, pink and various other shades (see picture). From a distance it looks like ceramics; move closer and you’ll see that in each of the painted boxes are written phrases like “Allah,” “God is great,” and “What God wills.” And among the religious terminology are other squares with hearts pierced by arrows, with initials marking their sides.
Another faux-ceramic effect captured by Kamel is an ingenious effort to create a seemingly altered reality. The amount of effort taken to create slight variations in shades of blue causes one to ponder people’s need to portray opulence even in such bare circumstances. Kamel makes sure to include the wall of the surrounding building in the foreground to keep the contrast of the sparkling blue and grimy gray in mind.
All the pictures on display were captured on the stretch of the Ring Road passing through Haram on the way to Maadi.
“It started at first on the Mehwar,” says Kamel, “where I’d noticed the different colors of the landscape and buildings–green, yellow, brown.” This inspired her previous exhibition on the same theme, but focusing on houses from Mohandessin to Haram instead.
The photographs themselves are neatly printed on thin wood panels of various lengths and widths, and are all for sale.
Kamel has a PhD in digital photojournalism and works as an associate professor at 6 October University teaching photography. Her hope is for her students to further explore this theme of hidden beauty within Cairo’s poorer districts.
The exhibition runs daily from 4 PM – 10 PM until 11 March
Easel and Camera – Contemporary Art Gallery
11/2 El-Nasr st., besides HSBC Bank, Maadi
www.easelandcamera.com
012 799 4896 – 010 183 4449
