Here’s some fleeting street photography from 1940s Egypt:
Weekly photo challenge: Fleeting moment
Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Parks
Ailsa proposes Parks this week. See her great park story here: http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/06/22/travel-theme-parks/
Here’s mine:
In the heart of Alexandria in Egypt, there is a green square running down to the esplanade along the sea. It’s called the Midan Orabi or Orabi Square, or Place Mohamed Ali. At the end of the square is a neo-classical monument donated by the Italian community in 1938 and originally dedicated to Khedive Ismail (‘Khedive’ is a title, like Viceroy). He had studied in Paris and held diplomatic missions in Europe before his appointment as viceroy of Egypt from 1863 – 1879 under the Ottoman suzerainty. He incurred massive foreign debt, borrowing from European financiers, and this mismanagement led to British intervention and the occupation of Egypt in 1882. If this hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have this photo.
My father had this picture in his album of photos taken in 1941/42 when he was there as an Australian defending the British Empire.
Khedive Ismail being remembered for not much more than his hateful administration and the introduction of colonialism, the monument facing the Mediterranean sea, or more specifically, facing Europe, was recycled in 1966 into a monument to an ‘Unknown Naval Soldier’.
Modern photos show Orabi Square still with tall palm trees though at ground level it is now quite cluttered and busy, not neat and open as it was in the 1940s when the area was known as Place Mohamed Ali, or the French Gardens, and it looked like this:
Weekly photo challenge: Close
I bet he smells sheepish.
Weekly photo challenge: Friendship
I have several photos taken in Egypt of soldiers smiling together with their arms around each other, close mates in a time of war, establishing friendships unlike any they had back home. This photo is interesting for its depiction of friends but also because of the background the photographer captured. They seem to be standing on top of a building showing off Heliopolis, developed in 1905 as a model suburb of Cairo by Baron Empain, a Belgian industrialist. One of the buildings he ordered his architects to design was the Roman Catholic Church (behind and to the left) known as the Basilica of the Virgin Mary, or l’Église Notre Dame d’Héliopolis, built in the heart of the new suburb in 1910. It’s a small copy of Hagia Sofia in Istanbul. When the baron died in 1929 he was buried in the crypt.
The mosque in the photo (behind and to the right) is described in the photo album as the ‘wailing mosque’. It does not appear in any present day web photo search, nor on Google maps. Many buildings have been demolished or altered during the last century, particularly during the 1970s, and this must have been one of them.
My father gave this photo the caption “S. Chambers”, though I don’t know which of them it is.
Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Oceans
Readers, before I begin, I want to thank Ailsa for her challenge and her ideas here: http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/06/08/oceans/
Oceans lap the Australian coastline on three sides. To the east there’s the Pacific; to the west, the Indian Ocean; to the south, the Southern Ocean. The northern coastline is lapped by seas not vast enough to be called ocean. They’re the Timor Sea and the Arafura Sea, separating us from the islands of New Guinea and Indonesia.
In 1941 ships crossed the Indian Ocean to take Australian troops to the Middle East and back home again. The photo below shows the Aquitania leaving Sydney Harbour in 1941 before she was painted battle grey. Before being assigned as a troopship the Aquitania had been a luxury liner in the Atlantic and before that she had served in the First World War. She was the last surviving four-funnelled ocean liner. The photo was possibly taken from the Queen Mary, another liner transformed into a troop carrier. There was a convoy of converted liners in Sydney Harbour in April 1941 taking on board thousands of soldiers. The Aquitania and the Queen Mary made a number of these journeys across the Indian Ocean and back. Of course, Sydney is on the east coast of Australia and the ships were heading west, so it was a long trip just to get out of Australian waters, let alone across the Indian Ocean. My mother told me that my father went on the Queen Mary, and his service record tells me he left Sydney on 1st September 1941 and arrived in the Middle East on 25th September. About three weeks at sea. On the ocean.
Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Rhythm
Ailsa proposes ‘Rhythm’ as this week’s photo topic, which is great for me! Since the WordPress weekly photo challenge is proposing ‘Today’ as a topic, I can’t draw on my father’s black and white photos from seventy years ago! But I can for Ailsa.
See her Rhythm story here: http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/06/01/rhythm/
And here’s mine, the only photo from the album in which someone is playing a musical instrument. I imagine this monkey is dancing to the beat. It was amusing enough for a few people to stop and watch and for at least one soldier to stop and photograph. My father wrote ‘Kan-Kan’ under the photo, so that must be the monkey’s name.
An Egyptian man with a dancing monkey is generally a beggar who lives on alms. He is called a fakir (so I read), an Arabic word for ‘needy man’. In Western countries, the use of animals for street entertainment is frowned upon now, though I did see some online images of dancing monkeys in India and Pakistan. I suppose it’s like busking; there’s probably some talent involved in training the monkey. But from then on it has to dance for its supper. It’s something which leaves me ambivalent: I have a real (Western) pleasure in Orientalist images, whether they be paintings or designs or photos like this one. I feel the same when listening to gypsy music like that of Django Reinhardt, which makes sense: the word gypsy comes from Egyptian. The colourful elements of Middle Eastern life are like chocolate to me; they’re rich and mysterious. Here’s to ancient peoples! We owe them much.
Weekly photo challenge: Summer
The photos I’ve submitted so far for the weekly photo challenge have been from North Africa in 1941 or 1942, but my father, who took those photos, missed out on an Egyptian summer. He left Australia in spring to go to war in the Middle East where it was autumn followed by winter followed by spring, then returned home to autumn followed by winter. However, in the album there are photos taken a few years later when he and my mother had a holiday together, in what looks like summer. Well, it was in Queensland, where it’s hot for at least nine months of the year.
My father’s face was heavily shaded by the hat, but editing it to increase the brightness revealed his features. This is how he always looked. I don’t think I ever saw him without a cigarette dangling from his lips. However, something that’s unusual to me is his short sleeves. I never saw his bare arms. I was born about thirteen years after this photo was taken, and by then he was wearing long sleeves and trousers in all weathers. I always wondered what he was covering up, especially when temperatures were up in the high thirties of summer.
The romance implied in these two photos is somewhat comforting. ‘You take my picture and I’ll take yours.’ They seem to be enjoying their holiday. My mother is about 24 and gorgeous in clothes she made herself; my father looks healthy, tanned and muscular. This is not the man I knew all those years later.
Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Street markets
Ailsa (http://wheresmybackpack.wordpress.com) proposed Summer for her photo challenge last week and I was inspired to look long and hard for the right photo to submit. There were no summery images in the war album of photos taken when my father was serving in the Middle East, during the northern winter! So I had to resort to my own recent photos. Now, coincidentally, here’s that summer theme again on this week’s WordPress photo challenge. But I don’t feel disappointed because I have a photo I’ve looked at many times and wondered what theme I could use it for – and low and behold, coincidentally again, Ailsa has put out a new challenge… for Street Markets.
Weekly photo challenge: Hands
To an enemy, our hands are the most immediate threat. With our hands thrust as far away from our body as possible, most of us are defenceless, except for those with awesome kicking skills. Here, two soldiers play at war as if they were boys, except the gun and bayonet are real. And the war is real. But so are the smiles, for now.
Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Reflections
While waiting for the WordPress weekly photo challenge, I’m responding to Ailsa’s challenge to find a photo of reflections. See hers here: http://wheresmybackpack.wordpress.com/2012/05/12/reflections
This one of flamingos in Helwan Gardens, Egypt in 1942, is perfect for the theme. The AIF soldiers (my father was one) visited the gardens when on leave in Cairo.
