An American University in Cairo exhibition presents rare photographs from the collections of KAC Creswell and Van Leo. Amina Elbendary reports For AUCians, Creswell is a special collection of books, or a library. For historians and specialists in Islamic architecture worldwide, Creswell is a main reference. To check Creswell is to look up what KAC Creswell had to say about a particular monument in one of his published works: Early Muslim Architecture (1931) or Muslim Architecture of Egypt (1951). For artsy Cairenes, Van Leo is a late, eccentric photographer of glamour shots. You say Van Leo and people in the know immediately think of the photo of the famous belly-dancer Samia Gamal in action and under spotlight. The exhibition currently on show at the American University in Cairo's Rare Books and Special Collections Library (RBSCL) offers a tantalisingly-limited selection of photographs by both Creswell and Van Leo. The idea might seem strange at first glance. What on earth did these two men have in common? Born in 1874, Sir Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell is one of the generation of traditional, British Orientalists, a scholar of Islamic architecture, who lived in Cairo for most of his adult life until 1974, shortly before his death. He was professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at Fuad I University (later Cairo University) until 1951 and at AUC from 1956 onwards, and was active in the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l'Art Arabe. The photographs he took were part of his work documenting and studying Islamic architecture. Leon Boyadijan (Van Leo), on the other hand, is of a later generation. Born in 1921, he was a Cairene Armenian who photographed people -- including celebrities -- for a living. His photo collection dates back to the 1940s; he shared a studio with his brother Angelo until 1974 when he established his own studio where he continued to work until his death in 2002. As Steven Urgola, AUC's university archivist, explained, Van Leo bequeathed a legacy of some 13,000 photographic negatives and 12,000 prints to AUC. The current exhibition doesn't delve much into the backgrounds of the men, but as the archivist of the Creswell photographic collection and the curator of the Creswell section of the exhibition, Simone Bass, explains, "the idea was to show so far unseen images of the Van Leo and Creswell collections and also to show the Creswell collection in a new light not only as a document for the architectural history of Cairo but also to show vignettes of social life in Islamic Cairo from the 1920s to the 1940s." Creswell documented the state of the city walls before the clearance work undertaken by the Comité and in these photos one often sees scenes of everyday life literally at the margins; they are natural shots of unobserved Egyptians. One example is of a group of pedestrians standing on the side of Bab al-Futuh, obviously waiting for Creswell to finish his work before crossing through the gateway; a little boy with them can't stand still for that long: he moves resulting in a double face. On the wall behind the group is clearly legible graffiti reading: al-ikhwan al-muslimun : du'at al-qur'an (The Muslim Brothers: Preachers of the Qur'an). Out of some 10,000 photographs that the Creswell collection comprises, at least about 400 show some aspect of city life -- against their taker's wishes. Indeed in some photographs one finds signs of the lengths to which Creswell went to remove the people from his shots to get the best possible unobstructed view of a monument. Sometimes people left traces in spite of Creswell's best efforts. A series of photographs of the interior of the mausoleum of Sultan Pasha also suggest that the keeper had made his lodging in the mihrab : one image shows a bed and personal belongings while the second shows a perfectly orderly interior; brushstrokes are even visible on the floor suggesting a recent sweep. "Creswell was not really interested in people," Bass muses, "for him people were only interesting as patrons of monuments or as builders, but after this people should stay away from a monument because anything else they could do would only cause damage. He liked to see his buildings without people." A pioneer in photographing Islamic monuments in Cairo in the early 20th century, Creswell was particularly interested in early Muslim and mediaeval architecture but his collection also includes Ottoman buildings -- contemporary urban architecture did not interest him -- and he often returned to the same monument after restoration to document its altered state. Creswell's photos "are a very important source [for the history of art and architecture], and they become more important as time passes", explains George Scanlon, professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at AUC, "because many of the monuments have themselves disappeared and the ambiance around the monuments has certainly been eclipsed." Creswell also travelled widely in the Arab and Muslim world and took his camera along: "His photographs of cities like Samarra are of great importance today because these centres are in the eye of the storm. There are even some from Iran that are of interest because the monuments have changed so much today," adds Scanlon. This is where the interest of the Creswell photographic collection primarily lies. However, at the risk of sounding glib, the photos can only be of use to scholars if they have access to them. AUC has had the collection at least since 1956, when, on the eve of the tripartite aggression, Creswell donated his collection of books, notes and photographs to the university to ensure their safety. With time the books have found a home in the RBSCL; little has been done -- yet -- with the photographs, papers and notes. More importantly, the photographs need first to be catalogued and made accessible to scholars. "Getting all of this catalogued would be more like a national endeavour," says Scanlon, "now we are trying desperately to raise money so that we can have all the photographs properly catalogued and made more quickly available to the professional public." Indeed, as Bass explains, an 18-month project funded by the Getty Foundation to catalogue and conserve the photographs alone will come to an end in October 2005, at which point the catalogue -- though not the images themselves -- will be available online. While AUC Press, we are told, indicated an interest in publishing some of the unpublished photographs, more work is needed to make full use of them. In this age of digital technology, a digital archive should seem the best possible option. Van Leo, on the other hand, is known for his "artistic" photographs and his glamour photographs of the rich and famous. The exhibition here juxtaposes some of his recognisable glamour shots with other unknown images of the same celebrities. It thus offers a curious insight into the making of an image, and the manipulative role that the photographer played in the process. Like many professional photographers, Van Leo would usually take a series of photos in a particular session yet only one would leave the studio. And it is rather jerking to see some of the photos of celebrities that have become almost iconic placed in this pluralistic context. Doria Shafik's famous portrait has her all serious and intellectual. To see another image of her as playful and smiling, on display here, offers a more human idea of her character. Van Leo's prints also show how he artistically manipulated images to produce the perfect photograph: cropping repeatedly, playing with light and shadow, and sometimes hand-colouring the photo. The exhibition, curated by Kristen Gresh, who also headed a cataloguing project of the collection over the past year, also displays photos of non-celebrities -- the everyday kind of work at Van Leo's studio. Since many Cairenes and even foreign visitors went to his studio to get their portraits or wedding photographs taken, Van Leo's collection offers an interesting insight into Cairo's social history. The photos are mainly of upper middle-class Cairenes who were not famous in their day, but other less privileged faces were also snapped by him. On display is a photograph of Van Leo's own bawwab (doorman) which was part of a series on Cairene bawwabs. Once can't help wondering what conversation -- if any -- the two men exchanged as the pose was taken. An endearing series shows children posing in costumes, professional or national, in a tradition that has all but disappeared from Cairo today. After the revolution, for example, many children had their photos taken in miniature army uniforms. Although primarily a studio photographer, Van Leo's collection does include street scenes, among which is a series from the neighbourhood of Muski. In contrast to Creswell's focus on one particular monument per photograph, Van Leo's offer overviews of streets including the tradesmen, buyers and sellers and children, yielding a rare insight into "unposed" Cairene life. Van Leo has so often been reduced -- or elevated -- to the status of glamour photographer that it is refreshing to look at his photographs from the point of view of social history. Yet it is an endeavour that hasn't quite borne fruit here; this sample only suggests possible uses for the collection. But it might soon be easier to do things with the Van Leo collection; a cataloguing project is well underway. Over the past year the collection has been organised according to over 15 series or categories, and the photographic prints and negatives have been rehoused in archival-quality polyester sleeves, albums, and boxes. "In addition, detailed narrative descriptions and a list of album and box contents have been prepared and are currently being edited. Van-Leo's personal papers (correspondence, business records, magazine collections, etc.) have also been organised and are being described," explained Urgola. The catalogue will be available through AUC's library catalogue online later this year thus opening up numerous possibilities to researchers. This rather small exhibition is refreshing in that it tries to place the photos of Creswell and Van Leo in a different light from the one they are usually seen in. Creswell is often consigned to history of architecture buffs that the uniqueness of his photographs of Cairo is ignored. Similarly, Van Leo's photos of non- celebrities, which were by necessity the majority of his clients, are rarely placed in the limelight. The change of perspective is exciting for the many possibilities it suggests.
