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Egypt


1996

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Egypt
1996

Along the river

"Naguib Mahfouz will tell you: what’s meant to happen will happen… As has been the case for seven thousand years, the Nile transports and engulfs passions."

Abstracts

"18/02 Cairo. A breathtaking view of the pyramids. It was mentioned on the brochure. For our first night in Cairo, we chose a hotel facing the pyramids. If I were alone, I would probably have gone and got lost in the heart of the city of Naguib Mahfouz without losing a minute.

I was in Egypt for the first time. My daughter Zoé (fourteen years old) was with me.

I had this to owe to the idiotic comments that I’d often heard describing the disappointing setting of these eternal edifices in the rundown Cairo suburbs: I found the spectacle of the pyramids, seen from these suburbs, overwhelming.

(…) Like every nation, Egypt is the product of a mixture. The difference is that this country has persisted in leaving us traces dating from time immemorial. The latest traces are explosive. 

Violence, according to Naguib Mahfouz, is against the nature of his people: '… the nature which has characterized this people for seven thousand years will have the last word. This foreign phenomenon is the product of current circumstances. It will disappear with the circumstances that gave birth to it.'

He is a secular writer as well as a religious one. But he has always opposed the ideologies on which a power relies. Nasser’s men almost got rid of him. More recently, fundamentalists nearly inflicted a permanent punishment on him for his infamous tolerance. About his unlucky murderer, he would say: 'Can he do anything but destroy a society that refuses him? And if this can be done for a noble religious cause, his attraction for this tendency will be even stronger and firmer…'"

Extract from Carnets de voyage, 2000, Éditions Gallimard

Works

Egypt 3681
Vue sur les pyramides, 1996

Egypt
Gouache enhanced silver print
30 x 30 cm

Egypt 3683
Vue sur les pyramides 2, 1996

Egypt
Pencil and watercolours on paper
26 x 33 cm

Egypt 3675
Naguib Mahfouz, 1996

Egypt
Gouache on paper
33 x 26 cm

Egypt 3655
Bar El Fishawy, 1996

Egypt
Gouache on paper
24 x 32 cm

Egypt 3665
Journal de Zoé, 1996

Egypt
Pencil on paper
21 x 27 cm

Egypt 3671
Maisons sur le Nil, 1996

Egypt
Pencil and watercolours on paper
26 x 33 cm

Egypt 3679
Clair de lune sur le Nil, 1996

Egypt
Gouache on paper
33 x 25 cm

Egypt 3673
Marins aux Felouques, 1996

Egypt
Composition: silver prints, pencil and watercolours on paper
52 x 110 cm

Egypt 3661
Felouques, 1996

Egypt
Composition: silver prints, pencil and watercolours on paper
66 x 104 cm

Egypt 3667
Le Caire, 1996

Egypt
Silver print
30 x 40 cm

Egypt 3663
Une cour à Assoua, 1996

Egypt
Pencil, gouache and sand on paper
26 x 33 cm

Egypt 3659
Felouque de Rosette, 1996

Egypt
Gouache on paper
46 x 66 cm

Egypt 3677
La vallée du Nil, 1996

Egypt
Pencil and watercolours on paper
26 x 18 cm

Egypt 3657
Barques d'Alexandrie, 1996

Egypt
Gouache on paper
20 x 33 cm

Egypt 3669
Le Nil, 1996

Egypt
Silver print
30 x 40 cm

Maps

Egypt 3654
Map of Cairo, 1997

Gouache on paper
26 x 17 cm

Books

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