Ways of Remembering

Through framed images of its public icons, Cairo searches for a lost past

- SUKRUTI ANAH STANELEY

IN THE ALLEYWAYS OF OLD CAIRO, in its cafes, warehouses and barbershops, framed portraits of Egyptian icons are ubiquitous. Kings, presidents, religious and political figures are all immortalised on fading walls, held up as symbols of a glorious past. The figures may have faced defeat, death, resignation or the collapse of their empires, but what they represent in the public imagination seems to firmly hold on, kept alive in pictures hung across the city.

In 2015, the photographer Amina Kadous returned to Cairo, her hometown, after five years of being away. While she was gone, the city had changed in fundamental, historic ways. The 2011 Tahrir Square revolution deposed Hosni Mubarak, the fourth president of Egypt, who had been ruling since 1981. Mubarak's reign had been marred with accusations of corruption and abuse of power. As a result of the revolution, he was ordered to stand trial and eventually sentenced to life imprisonment. Five years on, what changes had this tectonic political shift induced into the landscape of Cairo? In what ways had the city altered, and equally significantly, in what ways had it not? Kadous set out to explore these questions in a photography project ongoing since 2017.

To her, the framed portraits that hung everywhere in the older parts of Cairo embodied a city attempting to negotiate its past and present. In an introduction to her project, she describes Cairo as "a city of icons," noting that it is part of Arabic culture to "glorify public icons, a concept rooted in our traditions and ethics." Her project attempts to interrogate this almost ritualistic etching of the country's public icons on the city walls. It probes the idea of memory and the act of remembering itself. She asks why "old iconic figures exist in such abundance" in the visual landscape of the city and what that represents.