Cairo

Monday, June 21, 2010

geralyn shukwit

I seek to photograph the world as it appears before me - the obvious, the hidden and all that comes into view. Raised in the Detroit area, I moved to Brooklyn in 1998 taking New York City on with a bicycle, passion and my camera. You can follow along on my journey at http://journey.eyemaze.net

I dream of travel and when the opportunity to go to Cairo presented itself, I was all over it, even if it was only for a few days. I feel this was the preview to a much longer visit in the future. A quick visit to a place I've only known through a friend's stories and the school books of years ago. I studied the tourist books to educate myself and understand what we were going to see, and we saw a lot of it.  But once there, I really just wanted to wander the streets to experience the life not presented in the books. Of course, we only had 3 days. We were going to see as much as we could and take it all in. We sure did. Still months later, I look at the photos and I am amazed by the world we saw so briefly. 

The first day we wandered through Coptic Cairo and then we went off into the city, made a quick left at the first road full of kids and small businesses. A smile comes across my face. Turns out no matter where you are, when kids see a camera, they smile and become performers for the lens. It was beautiful. Another turn of the corner and we came across an auto repair shop, no jack to lift the car, so they just flipped it on it's side. Three men with opinions on repairs, one working away while the others watched, always the same. I wished we could have walked on forever, but it was hot, and our map was useless as no one used maps - they understood English but when they looked at the maps, their eyes glazed over and just pointed to someone else who might know. They didn't either.

So these photographs are just a few from our wandering through the city, from the window of the tour van, from the far too brief adventure into a very different and beautiful world called Cairo.