Ronnie Close

The events of 25th January 2011 placed Egypt at the front and centre of discussions around radical transformations taking place in global photographic cultures. Yet Egypt and photography share a longer, richer history rarely included in western histories of the medium. Decolonizing Images focuses on the local visual heritage of Egypt and, in doing so, continues the urgent process of decolonizing the canon of photography. Drawing on a wide range of historical and contemporary visual materials this book discovers the potential of photography as a decolonizing force. In diverse ways the medium has been used to influence political affairs, cultural life and re-imaginings of Egypt in the transformation from a colony to a sovereign nation.
Ronnie Close presents a new account of the visual cultures produced in and exhibited inside of Egypt by interpreting the camera’s ability to conceal as much as it reveals. He rethinks how the visual has constituted a distinct cultural sensibility on its own terms. This book moves from the initial encounters between local knowledge and western-led modernity to explore how the image intersects with the politics of representation, censorship, activism and aesthetics. The photographic image disseminates knowledge from the specificity of its time but retains a singular property of its own creative expression that is more than the sum of its parts. Close overturns Eurocentric understandings of the photograph through a compelling narrative on this indigenous visual culture in a complex vision of decolonial difference in contemporary Egypt.

This is an extract from the book. The history of Cairo’s football fans is one of the most poignant narratives of the 25 January 2011 Egyptian uprising. The Ultras Al-Ahly and the Ultras White Knights fans, belonging to the two main teams, Al-Ahly F.C. and Zamalek F.C respectively, became embroiled in the street protests that brought down the Mubarak regime. In the violent turmoil since, the Ultras have been locked in a bitter conflict with the Egyptian security state. Tracing these social movements to explore their role in the uprising and the political dimension of soccer in Egypt, Ronnie Close provides a vivid, intimate sense of the Ultras’ unique subculture.

Cairo’s Ultras: Resistance and Revolution in Egypt’s Football Culture explores how football communities offer ways of belonging and instill meaning in everyday life. Close asks us to rethink the labels ‘fans’ or ‘hooligans’ and what such terms might really mean. The role of the body is essential to understand the cultural practices of the Cairo Ultras as stadium rituals and acerbic chants were key expressions that resonated with many Egyptians. Along the way, the book skewers media clichés, and retraces revolutionary politics and social networks to consider the capacity of sport to emancipate through performances on the football terraces.

The author of a book on football and revolution in Egypt gives us a list of must reads on football in the Middle East and North Africa. When researching my book on the ultras phenomenon in Egypt, Cairo's Ultras: Resistance and Revolution in Egypt's Football Culture (2019), I was surprised to discover how little has been published on football literature concerning the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. Apart from a limited number of journal articles, newspaper reports of different sorts, and various types of book publications, little has been written on football culture in Egypt per se. In particular, the Cairo ultras had not been looked at in a meaningful way as a significant social movement in recent years. However, as I began to write this reading list, I was pleased to hear of a new book by anthropologist Dr. Carl Rommel and look forward to more publications of this kind in the future.

Parallax Error is a found photographic image collection scavenged from well-known art history publications in bookstores in Cairo between 2012 and 2014. What makes the series distinct are the forms and styles of censorship used on the original images ahead of sale and public distribution. The altered images involve some of the leading figures in The canon of Western photographic history and these respected photo works enter into a process of state censorship. This entails hand-painting each photograph, in each book edition, in order to obscure the full erotic effect of the object of desire, i.e. parts of the human body. The position of photography within Egypt and much of the Arab world is a contested one shaped by the visual formations of Orientalism created by the impact of European colonial empires in the region. This archival project examines the intersection of visual cultures embedded behind the series of photographic images that have been transformed through acts of censorship in Egypt. This frames how these doctored photographic images impose particular meanings on the original photographs and the potential merits, if any, of iconoclastic intervention. Parallax Error examines the political and aesthetic status of the image object in the transformation from the original photograph to censored image. The ink and paint marks on the surface of the photograph create a tension between the censorship act and its impact on the original. These hybrid images provide a political basis to rethink visual culture encounters in our interconnected and increasingly globalised contemporary image world.
Keywords: aesthetics, censorship, iconoclasm, images, representation.

At a critical point in the development of photography, this book offers an engaging, detailed and far-reaching examination of the key issues that are defining contemporary photographic culture. Photography Reframed addresses the impact of radical technological, social and political change across a diverse set of photographic territories: the ontology of photography; the impact of mass photographic practice; the public display of intimate life; the current state of documentary, and the political possibilities of photographic culture. These lively, accessible essays by some of the best writers in photography together go deep into the most up-to-date frameworks for analysing and understanding photographic culture and shedding light on its histories. Photography Reframed is a vital road map for anyone interested in what photography has been, what it has become, and where it is going.

This essay examines the visual cultural meaning behind a series of photographic images that have been transformed through censorship in Egypt. The censored book images were collected in Cairo’s bookstores between 2012 and 2014, and the original images had been doctored to conceal the human body.

Sidewalk Salon is a new photographic project by artists Manar Moursi and David Puig that maps improvised seating arrangements in public spaces in Cairo. This playful visual taxonomy was compiled over a period of four years and comprises 1001 chairs, recorded during 50 city walks, each ranging from one to several hours.