[In this two-part essay we present a selection of captivating photographs from roughly the first half of the 20th century in Egypt, collected by Yasser Alwan and held by the photography center Akkasah at NYUAD..
Shamoon Zamir
Shamoon Zamir is Associate Professor of Literature and Visual Studies, Arts and Humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi. He is the Director of Akkasah: Center for Photography at NYUAD. The center is developing a photographic archive, and also a conference and exhibition series devoted to photography, with a primary focus on the Middle East and North Africa.
Zamir works in the areas of literature, photography, and intellectual history. His study of the African-American writer W.E.B. Du Bois explored literature’s dialogues with philosophy and sociology and his new book, The Gift of the Face, explores the relationship of aesthetics and ethics in the work of the early twentieth-century photographer Edward S. Curtis and his encounters with Native American cultures. Zamir is currently completing a book on The Family of Man exhibition from the 1950s, and on the exhibition`s global reception. He has also recently co-edited two volumes of essays, The Family of Man Revisited and Photography from the Middle East. Both are forthcoming from I.B. Tauris in 2018.