Egypt Every Day: The Photography of Yasser Alwan
By Shamoon Zamir. Following the recently published collection of Yasser Alwan’s photography, the author shows and interprets a selection of Alwan’s work surrounding Cairo’s working class.
By Shamoon Zamir. Following the recently published collection of Yasser Alwan’s photography, the author shows and interprets a selection of Alwan’s work surrounding Cairo’s working class.
By Nurçin İleri. This essay centres on a series of photographs, which I first came across at an auction in November 2020. These black and white images depict Istanbul’s first urban scale power plant, the Silahtarağa campus and extension of the grid to the city in the early 1910s.
By Zehra Betül Atasoy. In early Republican Turkey, women workers – predominantly in tobacco, weaving, and the food industry – were gathered mainly in the city of Istanbul. Although the number of female workers in industrial production gradually increased, gender-based wage differences continued, with women earning less, and these workers were subjected to long hours and inadequate health and safety conditions.
By André Bank. Internationally, the standing and profile of Tunisia’s General Labor Union (French: ‘Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail’, UGTT) has been shaped by three broad images: The first image emanated from the UGTT’s active participation in the so-called Jasmine Revolution in 2011, when its leadership and members protested the ‘ancien régime’ of President Zine Abidin Ben Ali.
By Elizabeth Bishop. A photograph near the bottom of the wall caught my attention at the Habib Achour exhibit in the Kerkennah branch of the Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (UGTT, General Union of Tunisian Workers). A caption provides the information that the black-and-white photograph was taken on 26 January 1978.
By Rick Halpern. The first decades of the twentieth century were a remarkable period for heavy industry across much of North America and Europe. Mass production of goods such as rubber and steel – and consumer products like automobiles and radios – reached unprecedented levels.
By Berin Gölönü. Starting in the year 1870, a new type of public recreation space referred to as the “people’s garden” or municipal garden took root in the Ottoman Empire’s cities and towns. These formally landscaped spaces were modeled after Haussmann-era Parisian promenades.
By Rick Halpern. The 1930s were a formative period for documentary photography in the United States. The twin phenomena of the Great Depression and the emergence of a militant workers’ movement gave photographers interested in the working class a surfeit of material to shoot.
By İlkay Yilmaz. In the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire attempted to construct new technologies of transportation and communication in its territories. These were not only new technologies for the empire, they were also new to the rest of the world.
In this interview with Katarzyna Falęcka, the Lebanese filmmaker and artist Akram Zaatari discusses his practice based on collecting and studying photography.