Wasted Imaginations

Over the years, I had accumulated a huge number of diverse and high-quality photographs. I was overwhelmed by my passion for photography and wrote about my journey, expressing my fascination with images, which at the time represented magic and overwhelming ecstasy for me. After a long period of “adolescent fantasy,” I renounced that pleasure, as another vision emerged that differed from the usual, with a passion for photography, where I rediscovered the relationship between the image and the self, the social environment, and the universe.

In the context of my long reflections on images, I remember the first photograph taken in the studio, perhaps when I was four years old, sitting on a round table, wearing a striped jellabiya, looking surprised and strange, like all the photographs I had seen, my eyes wide and staring at nothing but the camera. All of this happened in a staged and rigid manner, which robbed me of all my senses and genuine feelings.

This was also evident in the deterioration of the methods used, which prevented any real interaction between the medium (the camera) and the human element. The increased cooperation between the parties resulted in a stereotypical image of beings resembling rough structures frozen in stagnation and stillness.

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Although the image reflects social reality, it often dispels the imagination inherent in reality, wastes the essence of social reality, and threatens the vital moment of movement by stripping it of its subtlety, renewal, and inspiration, replacing it with stagnation, isolation, and alienation.

All these visions have produced tangible and perceptible reflections in many areas. In Sabana, specifically during our elementary school years, we would end the school year with a group photo for each grade, including teachers and students, where we would gather in obedience and discipline in our school uniforms in front of the camera, our faces marked by frowns and poverty. No one understood the necessity or usefulness of that photo. No one understood the meaning of memories, and no one knew who was standing next to them in the photo. It was a mere tradition, not without its injustices, devoid of any expression or emotion, and nothing mattered except that the social worker collected five piastres for the photo. Many of the students did not care about owning the photo.

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In another scene, my photographer friends would roam the public parks. In the spacious Al-Nuzha Park, which includes the Antoniadis Garden and the Rose Garden, my photographer friend Zaghloul, with his tall stature, black glasses, and open shirt revealing his broad chest, would carry a large camera. He would come to the park in the days leading up to exams, when the lawns and meadows were crowded with students hiding behind huge trees to avoid being seen, while Zaghloul the photographer stole pictures of stolen kisses or passionate embraces, far from any moral intent. this is considered a form of theft and undermines the foundations of art, which is against concealment, deception, and the creation of falsehood; it reveals the misery of engineering.

The art of photography is a performance of imagination and knowledge; it is the production of meaning, significance, and value. It is the attainment of true drama in the image and the internalization of feelings and awareness of them, in order to achieve creativity and innovation through synthesis and composition in the darkroom.

However, the cost of sitting around a family or friends’ photo album is nothing more than a passing ritual; expressing pure pleasure and ecstasy, filled only with the aesthetics of the image or the restoration of fragile and marginalized memories, and does not allow for contemplation and reflection on the social content of the image; where it has become a mere imitation of reality or an example; it dissipates as quickly as it was formed.

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The photographer, who must prove his authenticity and assert his freedom, is the street photographer or the outsider. He expresses his opposition and alliance at the same time, capturing unfamiliar images that reveal a true awareness of reality and establish creative concepts for other forms of knowledge. dedicated to a new system for building the mind and conscience and affirming the fertility and growth that life is full of. Photographers of open spaces declare their passion for natural light, running after it to blend with the “filter” of the image and its clarity, to remove the reproduction of nature and the mechanical monstrosity that surrounds the image. Historical awareness grows spontaneously and freely, in an attempt to extract experiences and lessons from the spirit of the moment.

Let us emphasize that everything is usable and recoverable. Those who collect old, damaged, and worn-out photographs from piles of discarded objects that have no value or meaning to them do not overlook another eye that finds them among those who are seduced by the image and attracted by its meaning, where concepts range between dispensability and exception. The law of need and seduction in all its forms and socio-psychological manifestations remains the vital criterion for reviving memories from memory.

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And so we survive the loss of those photos that slipped from their owners’ homes into trash cans, only to be found by strangers who do not know their origins but understand the feelings behind them: “A memento for my brother Yaqut Afandi on the occasion of his happy marriage” April 23, 1945, or “Taken on New Year’s Eve at 1:30 a.m. in Raml Station Square. I give you my photo as a memento, may it be a symbol of me in your absence. 1930.” My cousin, the son of my aunt, passed away. Nabil, passed away at the Fever Hospital on 15/6/1947. This photo is a memento of him to us. “Photographer Ezzat – and his photo was presented by His Excellency Sheikh Ismail Abdullah Al-Tahtawi, merchant and dignitary of Jirja, in early June 193 to brother Professor Muhammad Badawi Al-Banna Afandi.