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“When I asked people what the heart of Cairo was, everyone gave me a different answer,” Hanafi says, “so I decided to start with my heart of Cairo.” Hanafi, who is half-American and half-Egyptian, designed her project partly in order to fulfill her desire to stay in Egypt for longer than her previous brief trips.

The city, Hanafi said, is usually experienced in a closed matrix determined by one’s regular habits. She breaks this routine through walks whose direction and duration is determined by the whim of another person. Each new walk begins where the last walk stopped. Cairo offers itself up to the walkers, people shouting “Welcome!” to those carrying a copy of Cairo Maps, and saying “sawarini” (take a picture of me) to those wielding a camera, both of which comprise Hanafi’s gear.

Like her walks, her pictures break the recurrent images of Egypt. She says most people returning to other countries carry conventional pictures of Egypt: those by the Pyramids, along the Nile, on a camel, and so on.

Hanafi sends her off-the-beaten-track images to friends in Chicago, almost all of whom have never been to Cairo before, and asks them to comment. In so doing, she takes them on an imaginary walk outside of their regular direction.

Once pushed out of their regular orbit, the city has surprises even for veteran Cairenes. Her walking cohorts are also asked to write about their experience; Hanafi does the same. Each of her walks — six so far — has been colored by the nature of the companion, says Hanafi. One companion who found Cairo a warm, welcoming place interacted with almost everyone and everything crossing her path, while another who found the city’s inhabitants intrusive interacted differently with the city.

With various impressions from walkers here and in Chicago, Hanafi will thus create an amalgam of a city that is rich and multifaceted. While unsure as to the exact end result, she hopes to publish the pictures and writings documenting her walks.

Having no set endpoint leaves every turn to the walker’s fancy. A quaint shop, an ornate wall-hanging, a faraway bridge, the presence of sun or shade, these become determinants of the path rather than deviations from a set route.

As I quiz Hanafi about her artistic project, in other subtle turns I also discover her beginnings as a poet, and glimpse into her mind where she complains, she remains all too often. “That is partly why I decided on this project,” she says, referring to her first walking project in her hometown Chicago, “I wanted to get out of my own head.” She wanted to overrun her mind, overwrought with the same ideas and thoughts, with new stimuli and sensations. Yet, she says, she finds she somehow still returns to similar themes in her work, but she adds, with a stroke of difference.

Hanafi says she perhaps has not been very articulate. “No, that is very articulate,” I answer without fully being able to convey that the moment she expressed her isolation was when I felt most connected to her.

We decide to stop on what we are informed is Muashasha Street, near Qadra Church (which Hanafi later finds dubiously translated as “Marginalized Church”). While it is close to the Ghamra metro station we crossed along the way, we come to an impasse that was bound to occur in Cairo: being unable to find oneself on Cairo Maps. Hanafi says she will figure out how to get here the next day somehow. To find your way around Cairo, you sometimes just need to follow your heart.

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About the Author: Chitra Kalyani is a Cairo-based freelance writer. This piece was originally published in The Daily News Egypt.

Her book, Ordinary Lives was selected as one of the Best Books of 2009 by Photo-Eye Magazine. “In my work I am only looking at human beings, at mothers, at children, at families and people trying to go on with their lives regardless of their political affiliations and religion,” she says. “We are connecting at a personal and human level. When we put politics on the side, we can look at people’s faces and eyes and see the person — a person who is just like us.

“We can see a person’s humanity. What drove me to this work in the first place is that I grew tired of the politics of this whole area, of politicians and their slogans, and lumping people into one category or another.”

Check out the exclusive gallery Rania shared with us >>

STATS
Window or Aisle Seat: Aisle
Favorite Magazine/Newspaper: Aperture Magazine/NY Times
No morning is complete without: Coffee

1. If a picture is worth a thousand words, which ones reappear in describing your work and why?
I hope the words that would reappear in my work are:

humanity, dignity, resilience, beauty and vulnerability.

I like to photograph people, to show them in their surroundings and to show the beauty in everyday ordinary moments of life. This would apply to my work in Lebanon, in the Palestinian refugee camp, and in the aftermath of war. There is beauty in humanity and one just has to take the time to find it. There is dignity, resilience and humanity in all those simple mundane moments of a mother nursing her baby in the refugee camp, of the girl bringing a smile to her mother’s face in front of a background of destruction, of a girl juggling in a building where all the walls have been blown off.

It also applies to my new body of work “A Girl and her Room,” in the sense that I am looking for the beauty and the complexity of the teenage-self without any judgment associated with it. I am portraying those girls in their element, in their very private and personal surroundings; by themselves, vulnerable and free of any preconception associated with teenagers.

2. How has your background in architecture influenced your work as a photographer?
I studied architecture and combined it with numerous art classes in college — mainly painting; the combination of all this has been extremely influential in my photography in terms of seeing. Looking at everything from composition, texture, and light, to framing an image became second nature.

3. What are the challenges when photographing live subjects? Especially people — and how do you overcome them?
I truly enjoy photographing people. I don’t think of it as a challenge. I am drawn to people, to what they do, how they behave, etc. I am drawn to people in their surroundings. I am very aware of how I frame each image and where the person is in the photo.

In the more intimate and interior shots, access is the most important part and the biggest challenge. Once access is granted, it is up to me to make sure the people I am photographing are comfortable with me around. I need to earn their trust and make sure they know that I respect them, and I try to make myself invisible. I build a personal relationship with the people I photograph. I always go back and visit and I always keep in touch and send images.

It is very important to me that the people I photograph understand that I am not just looking at them as subjects but as human beings with a story to tell.

I listen to their stories and take their cues of what they feel comfortable portraying. It can feel very vulnerable being photographed and observed by someone, so I really have to create a relationship of trust and comfort.

4. You teach photography to young girls in refugee camps — tell us about that.
I just started this past summer in 2009. I worked with teenage girls in the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut with the assistance of the Norwegian People’s Aid. I thought girls often have fewer opportunities and that teenagers would be perfect for this — photography could also be an accessible way for them to find a way to express themselves and portray their everyday lives. It was a huge success and I tremendously enjoyed working with the girls. The equipment was pretty basic, so it wasn’t as much about teaching them about the rules of photography as much as teaching them how to see, how to frame, how to edit and how to create a final body of work they can be proud of. The variety of projects that came out in the end was very impressive.

5. Can you ever shut your “photographer’s eye” or are you constantly looking for the next picture?
I never shut my photographer’s eye. It does get exhausting sometimes but at the same time, I wish I would never shut my photographer’s eye. It keeps me seeing life, beauty and uniqueness around me. Even if I don’t have my camera, I see the picture.

6. What does a photographer see that others don’t?
I am sure every photographer will have a different answer. For me, I tend to notice the beauty and quirkiness of human behavior, those funny little beautiful fleeting moments that come and disappear, that a camera can grasp in fractions of a second.

For more on Rania Matar, visit www.raniamatar.com >>

Purchase Ordinary Lives here >>

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About the Author: Danah Abdulla was not born in Canada but has lived here since the age of two. A Palestinian with a degree from the University of Ottawa in something other than Engineering (Mass Communications, minor Commerce), she lives in Toronto where she works as a Digital Cultivator for a big advertising agency. She’s a freelance writer and a blogger. She likes to doodle, read, make jokes, and dance.

STATS
Black & White or Color: Color
Now playing: Bob Dylan
Favorite Photographers: Michael Ackerman, Rebecca Norris Web, Giorgi Pinkhassov

1. What’s the first picture you ever took?
The first picture I took was in university when I started taking my photography course — our first assignment was to go out and approach random people on campus and ask them if we could take a headshot of them. It was an absolutely horrible set of pictures. I didn’t know what I was doing, it was awkward, the people’s expressions were awkward — it was actually so bad that I was assigned to go out and re-do it.

2. Do you see the world differently through the lens?
Yeah, because I’m really looking for certain things like the color, the movement and the light. If I don’t have my camera, those things will pull my attention, but

when I’m looking through the lens I’m in a completely different zone.

3. What’s the longest you’ve gone without taking a picture?
I used to have to take at least one picture on a daily basis because of my practice as a newspaper photographer. Every single day [I was] out there taking a picture of something. And then when I became a freelancer, it was a lot more about me initiating the work and projects that I wanted to do. So it could be a month that I go without a picture that I’m taking seriously and intensely, that’s intended for something.

See more of Laura’s “Four Seasons in One Day” gallery >>

4. What’s your favorite thing to photograph?
People. In the last year or so, I’ve really been focusing more on women. I’ve developed this interest in photographing women’s issues — like the project on the veil, and I just recently photographed something in India that was about the widows of farmers that were committing suicide.

5. What’s one place or event you can’t wait to photograph?
I would really love to photograph some kind of conflict or war situation. I’d love to be there to witness it first hand and document it in pictures. For a very long time, that’s really what I wanted to do. I stopped dreaming of that because I realized maybe I’m not so emotionally prepared for it, but if the opportunity comes my way, I’d take it. The other thing I’ve always wanted to photograph is fashion, like New York Fashion Week or something like that. I’d love to do that, that would be fantastic.

6. Has anyone ever confronted you/complained for taking their picture?
Yeah it happens all the time. And typically, from my experience, it’s always someone that you’re not even photographing that comes up to you and complains. It sounds really strange, but usually I’m pointing my camera in one direction and somebody that’s behind me comes up and says, “Why are you taking a picture”?

Normally, I don’t ask people for permission to take their picture before I take it because if I do, then the picture will completely change. Whether they like it or not, they become very conscious of me and my presence. So I usually try to smile at the person and give them some kind of recognition like ‘yeah I’m taking a picture of you’ but I’ll just leave it kind of open ended.

See more of Laura’s “Four Seasons in One Day” gallery >>

For more of Laura’s work and to purchase prints, visit her website >>

STATS
Camera: Hasselblad
Zoom-in or walk-up: Walk-up
Dental school–would you go back? Nope

Man in Lebanon

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1. Of all the countries you’ve traveled to and photographed in, what’s your favorite?
My body as it travels across borders feels little towards one country versus another. A state does little for me. Rather, it is the people that mean something to me, something more than any amount of land surrounded by borders could ever mean.

2. You’re also a dentist – do the two skill sets overlap at all?
Yes, the two skills do overlap. For one, both skill sets can be described as technical…and creative.

Measurements, whether they are in hundreds of millimeters or in thousands of a second, require a certain personality, a certain dedication to their importance. The tones of a print are related to the value of a dental crown. Both tasks also require a certain level of communication, social interaction. In the end, in my life one skill set funds the other.

3. When and how did you become serious about photography?
I became serious about photography in the mid-1990s, in my homeland of Lebanon.  After seeing the faces of the Bedouins and Arabs, I decided to make a visit to their areas.  Their hospitality made it easy for me to photograph and after returning the next year, my mind was made up to follow people through the years with the help of a camera.  Later on, reading about the life of Pierre Verger produced a peaceful sense of purpose within me, made me realize that others before me had done so and gave me inspiration to do the same.

4. When did you decide to turn your hobby into humanitarian efforts?
One incident more than any other gave me the impetus to do so. During my stay in Delhi with the Zakat Foundation of India,

a man invited me to follow him down an alley. At the end of this alley was a market, with numerous people barely scratching a living, with men laying down in the corridor barely conscious, flies all over them, children begging all along the way. He told me to point to some faces to be photographed.

Even though I felt a sense of difficulty in doing so, I did and he brought them to me to be photographed.  We did so in this most crowded area, tripod and all, then returned to his office.  These people all knew him since he was associated with the foundation that funded the local free clinic.  He then asked me: ‘What do you plan on doing with these pictures?’  That question was the beginning of raising funds through the photography.

5. What is a current humanitarian project you are working on?
The current phase of my photography is a collaboration with Nirvanavan Foundation.  This group works in traditional villages of Rajasthan, India, where child prostitution is rampant.  They have developed schools in eight villages and hope to reach ten in 2010.  My photography last month reached all ten villages, documented the children and has given me the tools necessary to reach a wider audience.  Over the next 12 months, the task at hand will be to prepare grants and proposals for galleries on behalf of these most wonderful folks.

6. How do you feel your work represents you as an Arab-American?
The work represents the subjects and nothing else. How people see the portraits is another matter.  They are all quite aware of my background, since this is one of the most common questions asked of me. Many of them may have met an American, perhaps even an Arab.

However, meeting someone from both lands that brings to them a little of each is something new.  Some are attracted to the Arab angle, some to the American.

Then there are the people that view the work itself. For them to see images of Cubans, Indians, Kenyans, Gambians, Senegalese and others made by a Lebanese born in Nicaragua and living in the United States gives them a different perspective than the one they have become accustomed to seeing in the general media.

For more of Halim’s work and information on the Nirvanavan Foundation, visit www.halimina.org

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About the Author: From the Midwest to the Middle East and back, Rami Mikati spends much of his time advocating for a more just world, often using art – hip hop, comedy, spoken word poetry, and film – as a medium to raise awareness. Rami believes the best way to generate compassion for a people is to humanize a people, and the best way to humanize a people is through art. He is a graduate student studying biological sciences at Kent State University, in his hometown of Kent, Ohio.

Misidentified Space

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STATS
place to photograph: Studio–it allows me to stage or perform for the camera while maintaining some sense of intimacy
form of photography: Color negative printing
color through the camera: Colors that appear natural but have a hyper-real effect

1. When did you first become interested in photography?
I have always loved taking pictures. My parents gave me an automatic Minolta camera when I was 11. They wanted me to take pictures of my family and friends to serve as memories. Looking back at some of those photos I see my girlfriends and I, so easily posed in front of the camera–at that age we didn’t have any insecurities or worries. We were in control.  That was my first exposure to “photography.”

2. When did you decide it was what you wanted to study?
I took the photography courses offered throughout high school but it was not until I took my first college course that I knew that was what I wanted to study. I have always been drawn to the arts, and was never really a strong writer.

After taking my first course I was instantly attracted to the notion that I could have an idea or thought and try to see it visually. Plus I used to skip most of my math and science classes to go hang in the darkroom!

3. Your inspirations, role models and why?
I have so many! Being from two cultures: Egyptian and American, I am always thinking about this “in between-ness.”

I often look at misconceptions of the nature of an Arab woman as well as highlighted stereotypes. Shirin Neshat was the first female Arab-Muslim artist I learned about, so naturally I was drawn to her. She juxtaposes a lot of written calligraphy, guns, and martyrs with body parts–making the body appear like an open book. Beyond the obvious: how powerful and poetic her work is,

I like how she takes a stereotype and uses it in a way to point it back in your face. This method of using a cliché symbol then subverting the viewer is something that interests me.

4. What are you doing now that you have your BFA?
I hope to eventually go back to graduate school for my MFA. In the meantime, I’m interning at a professional photo studio to gain experience and strengthen my lighting and business skills. I’ll be taking a trip to Cairo, where I’ll be freelancing while exploring ideas that deal with both my identities, as well as the expanding hybrid-mix of culture there.

5. What’s your favorite camera to play with?
I love using Holgas (plastic cameras)–the negatives are usually an awesomely crappy quality and the images are distorted so I never have full control over the result.

6. Your advice for younger artists?
Just start with something simple you like and are good at, and expand from that. Something great and true will come out when you are passionate about it.

For more on Noha Ghany, visit www.nohaghany.com.