Rania Khallaf attended the launch of an inspirational photography competition in Cairo The photography exhibition currently running in the Townhouse Gallery, which features the 30 best submitted photos selected by the jury, is the first Cairo photographic competition to be organised by the European Commission delegation to Egypt. The launch on 3 December was attended by Klaus Ebermann, head of the delegation of the European Commission in Cairo, who announced the prizewinners. The competition theme was "Egypt: Life in a picture". "The aim of this competition was to promote and stimulate creativity among amateur photographers in Egypt, and to give them an opportunity to showcase their work to a wide audience," said Nabila Massralli, the EU press attaché. The general theme of the competition, which was open to all amateur photographers in Egypt, allowed photographers to convey their personal vision and passions about or towards life in today's Egypt, depicting spontaneous human behaviour that included aspects of life in urban and rural areas. Pictures of mosques, moulids and specific cultural rituals were prevailing. One interesting image was of a man kissing the hand of a Quran reciter in a sort of religious celebration. The panel of judges -- composed of a number of prominent artists in different fields: Ramses Marzouk, Chris Bouroncle, Mohamed Gabr, Randa Shaath, Aleya Hamza, and Javier Menendez, representing the EU delegation -- chose only 30 pictures out of the 500 submitted. "The delegation of the European Commission has been delighted to see a high number of responses, and the artistic merit and quality of all those who submitted their work," Ebermann said. To warm applause from exhibition visitors, the media, and members of the delegation, the first prize of 1,000 euros was awarded to Abdel-Hakim Mustafa, a preparatory school science teacher. The second prize, a digital camera, was awarded to Mohamed Talaat Azab, a technical sales and marketing consultant. Mustafa, who was born in 1963, started to discover his passion for photography in the mid- 1980s. Since then his work has been shown in several group exhibitions, especially with the Egyptian Society for Photography. Mustafa's winning picture is quite amazingly unique. Entitled "The Smoke Man", it depicts an older man making pottery in a village in Qena. Smoke billows around him as he works. The story behind the picture deserves a mention. "I was on one of my frequent trips to the village of Altaramsa in Qena to shoot some pictures at a local moulid," Mustafa says. "I found the local pottery workshop, and I was surprised to see the man of smoke suddenly appearing from nowhere to stand in front me, with a cigarette in his hand. It was like a living painting before my eyes. I instantly took the shot. It has never crossed my mind that the picture would take the first prize in such a prestigious competition." A deeper look at the picture, however, reveals that the picture is not linked so closely to the idea of the competition, since it might be considered that it does not reflect an aspect of every day Egyptian life. Mustafa disagrees: "The location was tempting for any one to take the shot. But, there is a lot behind the picture: the smoke surrounding the man in such a poor, unhealthy work environment denotes the unhealthy work setting in which thousands of irregular workers in Egypt spend their days. "However," Mustafa continues, "such harsh circumstances, and the cigarette in his hand, prove his aspiration to work under any circumstances, and find enjoyment in a cigarette." One of the persistent issues that interest Mustafa is the question of identity. "Egypt has been the subject of many intellectual Western and Arab influences, and this is what has formed our identity as Egyptians," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. Mustafa's hero is the pioneer art director Shadi Abdel-Salam. "Apart from his masterpiece The Mummy [the popular name for The Night off Counting the Years ], which had an incredible influence on my formation as a photographer, Abdel-Salam inspired me on another project, " he says. As far back as 1967 Abdel-Salam had been planning to direct a documentary film called Al-Hesn, which would depict a number of Egyptian temples, among them Dendara and Horus in Edfu. "Unfortunately, the project was never completed," Mustafa says. "My next project is a huge one, called also Al-Hesn, in which I am documenting the cultural heritage of Upper Egypt from the point of view of preserving the Egyptian identity. I consider Upper Egypt as the main pot in which all Egyptian cultural and religious elements mingle and interact." Since 2001, Mustafa has travelled regularly to Upper Egypt to finish his project. Another plan of his is to document the ruins of Ansana, a small town in Minya governorate. "It was considered the city of magicians in the late Pharaonic era, and I came to discover the place by mere coincidence." Tamer Shahin, 31, a cartoonist whose picture was chosen by the jury, said he took up photography only two years ago. His photograph depicts a traditional café scene in Upper Egypt, with an old and distorted poster of president Gamal Abdel-Nasser hanging alongside other stickers, and personal notices on the café's messy wall. "The shot is very simple, but it reveals how some people, while being politically ignorant, still preserve this unexplained passion towards their political leaders," Shahin told the Weekly. Although his picture did not win one of the top prizes, Shahin has a high regard for the competition, and hopes it will become an annual event. "I also hope that the number of winners will increase by the next round."
