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2018/2019
In 2014, Google unveiled Street View for a handful of historic locations in Egypt, including the Pyramids. A policeman accompanied the Google team as they photographed the area with the Google camera. As a result, whenever a user tours the Pyramids using Google Street View, they find a policeman accompanying them.
I collected images from this tour and edited them to remove every person from view, leaving the lone policeman as a representative of the authority. The dystopian snapshots invert the habitual order in Egypt, where citizens are under constant, ubiquitous surveillance in public space and online. Instead, we follow the follower, watching the policeman in a kind of counter surveillance.
I turned these images into postcards and hand-delivered them to friends in Egypt. Printed manually on silver gelatin paper, then hand-colored with oil paints, the images allude to vintage postcards of the Pyramids. I asked those who received a postcard to write on the back about their relation to Egypt as home and authority, and return the postcard without an envelope. I asked them to document the card before it was put in Egyptian post, which could intercept it because of its contents. And, because Australia prohibits the entrance of letters and postcards delivered by post from Egypt, returns were redirected to Berlin.
The installation includes enlarged hand-colored prints of the original postcards and a map of the virtual Pyramids tour, along with the four postcards that successfully traversed the circuitous postal route. Since many others vanished along the way, I’ve included reproductions of the postcard writers’ scans of their messages. Each of these images are printed using the same darkroom process.
Installation shots for the Pyramids postcards shown in a preliminary phase as part of the group exhibition ‘While They Decide’ at the VCA Artspace in 2018.
‘The Pyramids Postcards: Following the Policeman’, oil on silver gelatin prints, 15cmX10cm each.
‘The Pyramids Postcards: Following the Policeman’, oil on silver gelatin prints, 15cmX10cm each.
Detail – ‘The Pyramids Postcards: Following the Policeman’, oil on silver gelatin print, 15cmX10cm.
Delivered postcards, oil on silver gelatin print, silkscreen, stamps, text in an acrylic box, 52cmX35cmX25cm.
Delivered postcards, oil on silver gelatin print, silkscreen, stamps, text in an acrylic box, 52cmX35cmX25cm.
Map of the virtual path where I followed the policeman, silver gelatin photogram print 40cmX27.5cm.
Vanished/Unsent postcards, silver gelatin prints, 21cmX29cm each, edition 1 of 5.
‘The Pyramids Postcards: Following the policeman’, oil on silver gelatin prints, edition 1 of 5 + 1AP, 41cmX29cm each, custom Tasmanian Oak frame (this image is constructed digitally).
Following the policeman #6, oil on silver gelatin print, edition 1 of 5 + 1AP, 41cmX29cm, Tasmanian Oak custom frame.
Google Maps/Street View coordinates:
Latitude: 29.9733697
Longitude: 31.1249325
Following the policeman #3, oil on silver gelatin print, edition 1 of 5 + 1AP, 41cmX29cm, Tasmanian Oak custom frame.
Following the policeman #1, oil on silver gelatin print, edition 1 of 5 + 1AP, 41cmX29cm, Tasmanian Oak custom frame.
Following the policeman #2, oil on silver gelatin print, edition 1 of 5 + 1AP, 41cmX29cm, Tasmanian Oak custom frame.
Following the policeman #12, oil on silver gelatin print, edition 1 of 5 + 1AP, 41cmX29cm, Tasmanian Oak custom frame.
Some of the postcards that got vanished or undelivered, oil on silver gelatin print, 15cmX10cm.
Reproduction of one of the vanished postcards that was sent by Salma El-Tobgy, Silver gelatin print, edition 1 of 5.
Following the policeman #1 to #11, Oil on Silver Gelatin prints, 41cmX29cm each.
“The white uniform on the security guy always fills me with anxiety.
I always see the Pyramids from afar, but I’ve never had the chance to visit them before.” – M. Elmaghraby
Pyramid Postcard #12, Oil on Silver Gelatin print, silkscreen, stamps, 15cmX10cm.
“There is for certain military naivety as a metaphor and symbol of the state. I don’t know how true and poetic my descriptive delivery of the thesis. I am not afraid of the soldier who wears a white uniform as much as I am afraid of the gelatinous entity that represents him, and its ability to destroy everything, even meaning itself.” – Huda Zikry, 2019
Pyramid Postcard #19, Oil on Silver Gelatin print, silkscreen, stamps, 15cmX10cm.
“I didn’t really believe in belonging to a place, for a long time, even when I was a kid. I remember I didn’t like the idea of nationalities, borders, and visas. Being here is really complicated. Home is the place that loves you, that doesn’t break you, where you return to hide and feel safe. It’s not the place that puts your friends in prison, that steals your rights and dreams and gives you a terrible life and future. I’m lost inside the daily grind. I don’t even know what work I’m supposed to do, or how my life is supposed to be because I refuse to fit the mold but I don’t see any alternatives. It’s like I’m revolving through all the lines. I wish I could learn a lot of things, but fear, anxiety, and lack of resources and opportunities is killing me every day. Everything depends on everything else. The authority and the uniform are at the top. You just see them and you’re scared. You don’t feel safe. Except my point of view is at least the opposite. Here there is fear in every corner, from every angle, in everything. You’re afraid to even dream, because you’ll break even more than you are already broken.” – Salma El-Tobgy 2019
Pyramid Postcard #16, Oil on Silver Gelatin print, silkscreen, stamps, 15cmX10cm.
“I am 37 years old, I’ve been living in Cairo for 19 years, and I’ve never visited the Pyramids yet” – A. Sabry
Pyramid Postcard #9, Oil on Silver Gelatin print, silkscreen, stamps, 15cmX10cm.
“Alone protecting the old Pharoh, alone protecting the new Pharoh, alone.. will be alone.” – M. Yehia
Pyramid Postcard #14, Oil on Silver Gelatin print, silkscreen, stamps, 15cmX10cm.
“I remember a school trip to the Pyramids for an assignment. I was afraid to climb high for fear of how hard it would be to come down. I wonder what you were doing on the same difficult trip?
Sometime later, the pyramid turned over and we rode a white donkey.” – Mo Al Dee
Pyramid Postcard #5, Oil on Silver Gelatin print, silkscreen, stamps, 15cmX10cm.
Two of the four postcards successfully traversed the circuitous postal route.