Question: what is the purpose of privacy if we're always being watched?
Question: where does the line get drawn between the feeling of running away and that of being chased?
Question: is it possible to be ethical in a place that is devoid of ethics?
Question: was there ever a place between construction and destruction, and who do I ask when nobody is around?
Question: where do you stop and where do I begin?
Question: if a building forcefully crumbles and falls but only I can hear the sound, can I still say that it fell?
The Furthest Nearby Place is an ongoing lens based project exploring the lack of permanence of Egypt, and the questions that have come about with growing up in its chaotic, yet comforting embrace. The Egyptian, post-revolutionary climate has been tumultuous, while the physicality of the country is subject to constant change and destruction under the guise of advancement of the new regime. Watching these changes over the course of my life has been heartbreaking, and profoundly confusing. In recent years as I come back to visit my family after spending time abroad in Canada, I find myself lost in Egypt’s new aesthetics every time. Unsure of where I lay, I have come to understand that Egypt still belongs to me, but I no longer belong to Egypt the way I used to. Each visit has become an attempt at connection, and an exercise of observation for me.
Each image in this series is titled with a question as a way to formulate a discourse around the subjects. The images themselves could be answers to the questions, or the very reason they exist. This body of work essentially reveals the notion of that vague, grey area that I feel Egypt has been shuffling through for the last decade. And thus, the individual photos become the furthest nearby place between “here” and “there”, between two cities, between the question and its answer.