{"id":1911,"date":"2012-08-04T16:09:34","date_gmt":"2012-08-04T16:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=1911"},"modified":"2012-08-04T16:09:34","modified_gmt":"2012-08-04T16:09:34","slug":"ailsas-travel-photography-leading-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=1911","title":{"rendered":"Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Leading lines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ailsa (http:\/\/wheresmybackpack.com\/2012\/08\/04\/leading-lines\/<\/a>) has proposed that we find a photo containing ‘leading lines’.\u00a0 Well, I’m no photographer or artist, so this was a technical term I had to look up.\u00a0 I now know they are lines in an image that lead the eye to a point, either in or out of the picture.\u00a0 In my father’s 1941 album of Egyptian photos, there are a few urban scenes with streets disappearing into the distance.\u00a0 But in this one, below, the roads coming towards us are leading our eye to the centre of the photo.<\/p>\n

It was taken in what was called, in the 1940s, Soliman Pasha Square, now known as Talaat Harb Square (Midan Talaat Harb), a short distance from Tahrir Square. In the centre of the square, in this photo, is a statue of Soliman Pasha which stood there from 1874 until 1964.\u00a0 Soliman Pasha was a general, born Joseph Anthelme S\u00e8ve in Lyon, France, who served under Bonaparte and then in Egypt was a military expert in the army of Mohamed Ali.\u00a0 He converted to Islam and took the name Soliman Pasha.<\/p>\n

At the far right of the photo is the once-opulent Groppi’s, formerly a Parisian-style caf\u00e9, tearoom and patisserie. Giacomo Groppi, a Swiss pastry maker, opened it in 1926 following success with other patisseries in Egypt.\u00a0 From the 1920s and through the war years, Groppi’s was the place to be seen.\u00a0 During the war, officers often stopped by for coffee or dinner or to find some female company.<\/p>\n

While at the time this photo was taken the British were the resident colonials – hence the Australians were there defending Egypt – in the previous century it was the French who were leaving their mark.\u00a0 In the 1940s French influence is evident everywhere, not just the Frenchman on the plinth and the patisserie that sold pastries made from secret recipes written in French, but the architecture is also of French neoclassical style from the era of Soliman Pasha in the 19th century.\u00a0 Note some of the signs are also in French.\u00a0 In the late 20th century Egyptian governments wanted to remove reminders of colonialism and so today, so I’ve read, much of the European-style glamour is neglected and dusty.\u00a0 The statue of Soliman Pasha has now been moved to a military museum and a statue of Talaat Harb, an economist, stands in its place.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Cairo, Soliman Pasha Square, 1941<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ailsa (http:\/\/wheresmybackpack.com\/2012\/08\/04\/leading-lines\/) has proposed that we find a photo containing ‘leading lines’.\u00a0 Well, I’m no photographer or artist, so this was a technical term I had to look up.\u00a0 I now know they are lines in an image that lead the eye to a point, either in or out of the picture.\u00a0 In my father’s … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Leading lines”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[4,5,6,39,30,7,8,10,141],"class_list":["post-1911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wwii","category-wwii-photos","tag-1940s","tag-215th-battalion","tag-black-white","tag-cairo","tag-egypt","tag-photography","tag-photos-2","tag-postaweek2012","tag-soliman-pasha-square"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}