Facing Authority?
The striking feature of the image is the juxapositon between "traditional" goings-on and the proliferation of satellite dishes. These latter, or course, are just the same as those Touma captures in his cityscape of Aleppo, Syria. The brief catalogue entry that accompanies Shaath's photos reads as follows:
"In traditional Cairo the roof was the place for relaxation. Families grew plants, kept pigeons, or looked at the stars. After 1920 the roof took on a new funciton. With the arrival of the high-rise and apartment complexes the roof became the living quarters for cleaners and concierges. In the 1960s, after the fall of the monarchy and the nationalization of considerable private property, a wave of migrants came from the countryside to the city. In the hope of a better life they joined others from their families who already lived on the roofs of Cairo. A rank growth of shanties on roofs was the result."
Here is yet another of Shaath's photographs. This one - of a man watching television - prompted me to think about the relationship of individuals to political and cultural authorities and especially the ways that such relations unfold in private as opposed to public spaces.
More specifically, this image brought to mind other, more directly confrontational and arguably "heroic" interactions. In my earlier post on Touma's "political landscape" I invoked Josef Koudelka's pictures of Czechs confronting Warsaw Pact tanks in Prague, 1968. Shaath's image brought to mind yet another, more recent, and so probably more widely known picture.
Again, the contrast between these anonymous men - one in the relative privacy of his home, the other quite literally in the public square - seems to reiterate my perplexities about how politics is embodied in events and how we can think about the latter.
Labels: Issa Touma, politics, Public Space, roof tops, spaces, Syria
1 Comments:
Jim: you might want to see a forthcoming book from University Chicago Press entitled Icons of LIberal Democracy: Public Culture in the Age of Photojournalism. It features case studies of a number of iconic photos, including this one from Tiananmen square. It should be out at about this time in 2006.
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