I'll be in Egypt from November 16 - 21 on behalf of Photopia Cairo for a lecture, photography workshop, and an exhibition of my City of the Dead photographs.

ARTIST TALK & LECTURE

On November 19th, I'll give an artist talk where I will share my journey through the City of the Dead, as part of my Exhibition. I'll also cover the importance of personal projects, long-form visual narratives, and advocacy work and hyper-local storytelling.

EXHIBITION: CITY OF THE DEAD

The Citadel District, Cairo, Egypt

November 17-25

Curated by Photopia supported by the US Embassy in Cairo.

EXHIBITION INFO

There was a time when in the City of the Dead, Cairo’s vast 13th century necropolis, the only living occupants were caretakers, paid by families to maintain their ancestral mausoleums. But as Cairo’s population density skyrocketed, refugees from the growing housing shortage laid claim to the city’s main cemetery.

In 1993, over one hundred and twenty thousand people lived, worked, shopped and went to school in and among the mausoleums. Today, that number is much higher. Huts are built around tombstones, between which laundry is hung to dry, and masses of people live and work in dwellings built amongst the grand burial sites of famous religious and political figures of Egypt’s rich history.

The City of the Dead, the oldest continuously used Muslim cemetery in the world, with history tracing back to the seventh century, is now under threat of demolition, with many tombs scheduled for exhumation.

It's being razed as part of a "modernization" plan by the current government, and will be replaced by a highway ironically called the "Passage of Paradise". This destruction is part of a worrying trend in Egypt: mass evictions, destruction of historic neighborhoods and landmarks, all to make way for luxury high-rises out-of-reach for most Egyptians.