Category Archives: Photography

Picturing the “Enemy”

Afghanistan, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Film and Video, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism and Media, Photography, Teaching Resources, Terrorism Issue, Yemen

My friend Karim Ben Khelifa, an award-winning photographic journalist who I met over a decade ago, has produced an extraordinary film (“The Enemy”) on his experience as a photographer of war and violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo and El Salvador, as well as 80 countries overall. On Youtube there is a talk he gave in 2019 about his work. including a number of his photographs. His amazing skill as a photographer is matched by his passion to show the reality of treating other human beings as enemies.

Karim has also taken photographs in Yemen over a decade ago. Some of these are archived on the New York Times blog. One of my favorites is the image of the mammoth mosque built in Sanaa by the late President Ali Abdullah Salih.

Thesiger of Arabia

Photography, Travel, Yemen

Anyone who knows anything about Arabia has no doubt heard of Lawrence of Arabia, even if only via Peter O’toole’s dazzling Hollywood version.  But there is also Thesiger of Arabia, especially his extraordinary trips across the Empty Quarter in the 1940s.  While in al-‘Ayn in 2014 I was able to visit the old fort, now a museum displaying a number of photographs that Wilfred Thesiger took on his trip from Yemen to the Emirates and his visit with Shaykh Zayed.  The albums of Thesiger are preserved online at the Pitt Rivers Museum website.  It is well worth looking at these.

I photographed several of the images in the al-‘Ayn exhibit dealing with Yemen, and these are reproduced below:

Sa’ar at Minwakh, Hadramawt, drawing water (1947)
Sa’ar watering at Minwakh, Hadramawt (1947-48), showing Thesiger’s goatskin water bags
Mahra boy
Sa’ar tent (1947-48)

Picturing Egypt a Century Ago

Architecture, Egypt, Food and Drink, Photography, Travel
Cairo around 1920

In 1921 one of the many geographical/travel books published was the The Human Interest Library: Visualized Knowledge (Chicago: Midland Press). In volume IV there is a brief account of Egypt, mainly on the archaeological wonders. But there are several photographs that are of interest. I include the captions from the text. Unfortunately neither the date nor the photographer are indicated, but let us assume that they represent life in Egypt in the first couple of decades of the last century. There is also a summary of information about Egypt at the time, as noted below.

“An Arab Cafe: These cafes are picturesque places where one sees the street life of Cairo at its best. Note the more humble style of the Turkish pipe smoked by this Arab without being set on the floor.”
“One of the oldest forms of irrigation machinery in the world. The captive Hebrews in Mosaic times probably heard the creak of the ungreased wheels and watched the water gush forth from the pottery buckets which are fastened to the endless grass ropes.”
“Sakkahs, or Water-Carriers: These men are sometimes negroes, as the seated man in the picture, as well as the boy who has taken water to drink from him. They are usually dervishes of the lowest grade, and are sometimes inclined to be fanatical. They are picturesque as well as a very necessary feature of Egyptian life.”

Persian Muscle Men

Iran, Photography

muscle
Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the sporting activities in the Zurkhaneh were declared inappropriate. Nowadays, however, they have become a symbol of Iranian national pride.

Persia’s “power houses” packed a punch
Qantara

Varzesh-e Zurkhaneh-i, (literally, the sport of heroes in the house of power). The ancient Iranian Zurkhaneh gymnasia have their roots in customs and traditions that date back to the country’s pre-Islamic past. This selection of early photographs portrays the world of the Zurkhaneh athletes from 1789 to 1925.