We have been invited on the 24th of September to attend the Sharjah festival for arab photo. I did not know that we were 3 Egyptians travelling to the Emirates until the night before.
I was very happy to know that Kareem Nabile -my old friend- is coming with us, and Mohamed Hossam who works as a photojournalist for ElMasry ElYoum newspaper. On the day of the flight, I found out that Mr.Galal ElMessary is coming with as a member in the arab photographers union.
We flied to Dubai airport then moved to sharjah and stayed in a hotel there. The day after, we woke up very early and went to the American University of Sharjah to attend the ceremony and the exhibition there. The univeristy is very impressing, great islamic architecture with large green areas, but the weather stops you from enjoying these great areas, we entered the theatre and waited for Sheikh Sultan Al Qassimi, Ruler of Sharjah to start the ceremony and awards announcing. We were astonished to know that egypt won 5 awards out of the 12 awards in the competition which made it the top winning country.

I won the Golden award in the category “Life in the City”, Mohamed Hossam won 2 Silver awards, one in the Book category and the other in “Life in the City” category, Kareem won the Bronze award in the same category. I was so happy with the award model of “Camera Obscura”, it has a lens and glass plate to see the real reversed image photo on it.
We stayed two more days and went back to Cairo.

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program, in conjunction with the DEAR NAVIGATOR editorial staff, announce the fourth installment of DEAR NAVIGATOR, an electronic magazine of contemporary art + writing, featuring emerging + established artists from around the globe.
DEAR NAVIGATOR creates a forum for innovative writing that works as art object, critical opus, interdisciplinary essay, poetic form, meta-text, and philosophical offering. Housed by the MFA Writing Program at SAIC, DEAR NAVIGATOR appeared quarterly and electronically, published a handful of established and up-and-coming writers per issue, and shepherded associated projects, including curated reading and performance series. “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be.”
—Virginia Woolf, 28 March 1941

Issue 4: The Greatest Possible Happiness features work from:
Amado Alfadni – David Antin – Mohamed Ezz – Robert Fitterman – Kristen Gallagher – Amelia Gray – Amanda Kerdahi – Jasmina Metwaly – Carlos Soto Román with Vanessa Place – Maged Zaher

Links:
Dear Navigator: http://www.saic.edu/dearnavigator/

Projection of “The Picture Story” workshop results
by John Perkins
Photographer John Perkins lead a workshop with the theme of “The Picture Story,” where participants look at presenting their chosen photo projects in magazines and galleries. Each participant will try to find a unique photographic voice, and will be encouraged to follow a thread to its conclusion.
The workshop will conclude with a projection of participants work on 20
June 2011 at 2:00 pm in Rawabet Theatre.

Links:
Facebook event
“The Picture Story” magazine

Darb 1718 is inviting you to the opening of ” Text ” Exhibition on 6th of June 2011 7:30 pm.
“Text” Contemporary Conceptual Art Exhibition:
Contemporary Conceptual art exhibit stresses the importance of text through the work of contemporary conceptual art, text is the conceptual part of the art projects or it is conceptual definition of it .
This underlines the importance of the text in the art works as a bridge between the artist and the conceptual work of art and the public.

Links:
Facebook event

Participating in Workshop 4: The Wrong Picture with Osama Dawod.
Talking about photos is sometimes much more valuable than the photos themselves.

The Wrong Picture
In a time when many people take pictures, many do it as an automatic practice, and few do so with much conscious reflection. That has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the picture, or whether it is a good picture or not.
What this workshop is really about is to answer this simple question: Does what we actually like to photograph reflect what we really are good at photographing? The workshop is designed to explore our watching and observational abilities. It stresses that “looking” is more important in photography than “clicking”. The participants will discuss and identify their “normal” habits and will begin to go beyond this, to discover other possibilities of what might be more interesting. There is no “Wrong Picture”.