While the world witnessed a 30-year-old regime crumble in 18 days at Cairo’s Tahrir Square on their television sets, laura El-Tantawy, Egyptian photographer, captured the history in her frames. By Angela Paljor
When you think of pyramids, cliches come to mind. But laura El-Tantawy sees them as fluid forms that have shed their contours and become something else in contemporary Egypt. Tantawy has captured the very essence of the Egyptian revolution – a call for bread, freedom and social justice. The photos and her short film titled Crazy for Sisi exhibit the emotions of the crowd; the elements of fear, hope, disappointment, faith and despair are vivid in the flame red and bright orange dominated frames.
“It’s the story of my generation and the moment that actually changed the future of the country. Earlier, my generation felt that our lives would prosper outside Egypt and not in it, so we left the country. But what I witnessed once I returned was a historical moment,” shares Tantawy, who returned to Egypt in 2005 when there was already an anti-government sentiment brewing. It was the time when rumours about President Hosni Mubarak handing down the power to his son were on fire.
By 2011, the political sentiment had accumulated, getting numerous people involved in the revolution. “Having lived for about nine years in the States with a different culture and standard of living, I was a changed person. I was trying to get to know someone all over again,” recalls Tantaway who went out on the streets to rediscover what she felt and what the country was trying to communicate.
The exhibition is a combination of a three-way digital projection, individual archives and an iPad that showcases the documentary. The loud photos are enough to bring back the moments of terror and relive the horror of blood being spilled. It’s not only limited in context of Egyptian revolution but a glance at humanity. Personally, the photographs took me back to the time of India’s independence, the horror of Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the Kargil war, Indian terror attacks and brought to life that fear that we always carry deep within.
Adding to the awakening of one’s soul, the rapt chanting of the crowd in the background and the rapid sway of the portraits of the crowd in close-ups are something worth witnessing at a time when humanity is losing its essence. “There is always something that one can relate to when you see such multiple utterances of a particular truth,” Tantawy says adding that she also worked on a series of portraits.
“They are the faces in the crowd that really stood out emotionally. It was important for me to take a deeper look at the revolution – it wasn’t about people holding signs and chanting on the streets. It was about people claiming their own country, their freedom and their dignity. This is about people and all those emotions on the Square, and there was no better way to show than to isolate these faces and let them speak for themselves,” Tantawy says.
Although she focusses on portraits in many of her pieces, the deep emotions and chaotic movements on the streets are palpable. When you view the images on the black wall of the gallery, it makes the colours stand out even more like you are looking at one image which is broken up into many forms.