"This
is not the story I set out to tell. All innocence is lost. They ask:
'Are you with us .. or against us?' In my time covering Egypt, I have
never seen so much violence. The country is so polarized and sharply
divided. There is a fire raging. So many people have been killed. I see
their blood seeping into a red mound of hate. This country that for a
long time inspired me to see good over bad has pushed me into a lot of
darkness..." This was posted on Instagram this week by the Smithsonian magazine and reposted by Laura El Tantawy. It is text excerpt no.5 from "In the Shadow of the Pyramids" Laura El Tantawy's first book. Published by Dewi Lewis and set for release in January 2015.
Recently I had the amazing good fortune to be able to interview Laura about her life and work.
Laura El Tantawy is an English/Egyptian photographer living between Cairo and London. She was untill recently represented by the prestigious VII Photo Agency through it's Mentor Program. Her work is recognized internationally through publications in Le Monde (France), Time Magazine (international edition), National Geographic Magazine (USA), Foam Magazine (The Netherlands), The Wall Street Journal (USA) and Burn Magazine (USA), among others. Additionally her work has been exhibited internationally, including solo and group shows in the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Laura El-Tantawy was born in 1980 in Worcestershire, England. Her parents were Egyptian, when Laura was five months old the family moved back to Egypt. Laura grew up in Cairo and spent her early teen-age years in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
I asked Laura about her upbringing and how it influences her now. "I grew up in a hardworking family. My dad is a self made man and I remember as a child a lot of the conversations he would have with my mother about making a life for us and never wanting to see us want something that we could not have. My parents have lived their life for us. They never do anything for themselves. My sisters and I are at the very center of their universe and their life literally revolves around us. I wish they would do more things for themselves. My father is a doctor and my mother is an artist. She has been a huge influence on my life artistically and my dad a huge influence in terms of his integrity, modesty and hard work ethic."
In 1998 Laura left her family and travelled to America to study at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA, where she read journalisn and political science."I always had a passion for writing – expressing, journalism seemed like the right place to start."
During her studies Laura had the opportunity to take a photography course to earn extra credits towards her diploma. "I am not sure I was always arty but I was certainly always different. I didn’t try to be different on purpose but always felt detached from everyone else around me. I completely embrace that sense of individuality even though it came at a cost usually. People tend to think you are weird if you are different. Again, I bring this back to my parents who always encourage me to be who I am and be proud of it, so that’s who I learnt to be – myself. I think I always had a desire to express certain emptions and early on I didn’t do that through writing and once I discovered photography, that became my writing."
"My professor at university was my first influence. I had never thought of photography as a career and actually did not know it could be a career. My only experience with photography had been on family vacations and my dad standing us up for 15 minutes long to take photos. So I thought picture taking was rather static. At university I remember the first event I covered where I realized photography has so much more depth. It was a dance performance and I took a picture of the dancers that was extremely colorful and blurry in a sense that you felt the energy of the dance. That was a revelation for me and I think my work always goes back to that image. The first work I saw that moved me was James Nachtwey’s Inferno and William Albert Allard’s work in National Geographic. I was impressed by Nachtwey’s concern for the world and the people living on the margins. I wanted to become the kind of concerned photographer he is. I was equally blown away by Allard’s strong compositions and sense of color and use of light."
After graduating from university Laura was selected as one of 16 college graduates from around the United States to take part in the Poynter Institute for Media Studies' Visual Journalism Fellowship . Laura says that her involvement in photography "Has been a very long and slow process. I guess once I finished university I was accepted at the Poynter Institute, that’s probably when I knew I maybe I was on to something."
In 2002 Laura started working as a staff photographer with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in 2003 they published a four day series studying the problem of obesity in America shot by Laura. After a spell at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Florida, Laura left to become a freelance photographer in 2005.
"Newspaper work was a great way to teach me flexibility and the ability to visually adapt in any given situation and be able to make pictures. I made no contacts through my staff job and my freelance career was very difficult to get started. I have always worked extremely hard and failed a lot and succeeded only sometimes. It’s all about your work, work and work. I have a lot of respect for the ethics and morals of photojournalism and this is how I work in the field, but the vision is not necessarily traditional photojournalism. I am not interested in telling stories, but I believe in making pictures that are around a certain theme or that come together to express something. Again, I want to emphasize that I see the individuality and personal expression as two of the main attractions for me to continue to pursue photography. This is all very hard though and does not come easy. It is much easier to conform to the standard and do what everyone else is doing – that work is easier to sell. But there has to be a model and a sense of this is who I am and this is what I am going to do and that’s how I am going to say it. There has to be a conscious decision of why you are doing what you are doing and the way you are doing it, otherwise it is all just up in the air and a waste of time. My style reflects who I am, as self centered as that may sound, but I think people who know me will attest to the fact that I am not arrogant. But this is just the best way to describe it, but generally photography is very much about the photographer. It’s about seeing and expressing those very personal emotions."
At this time Laura started work on a project to document a changing Egypt. This project would become known as "In The Shadow Of The Pyramids".
"I made a conscious decision not to rely on assignments to make a living. Having a sense of independence and staying true to who I am and what I want to express are extremely important for me. I work a second job, which is how I survive financially and I put my savings into my long-term projects. So this was a calculated decision that I made because I realized that if I was to survive on assignments, I would have to change my visual style. I wanted to maintain my freedom and allow myself room to experiment and possibly fail sometimes without risking my integrity with a publication. So I work under a different model – I produce the work, then have it published."
Over a period of nine days in January 2007, 55 photographers from all over the world gathered in Thailand to capture images of the kingdom at that precise moment in time. By the time the shoot was finished, the 55 photographers had delivered to EDM (publishers Editions Didier Millet) over 80,000 digital images; and several thousand photos taken on film had been sent for processing. Laura was one of the 55 photographers after being recommended by Magnum photographer David Allan Harvey. The book "Thailand: 9 Days in the Kingdom" showcased the best of these endeavours. The book was presented as a gift to the Thai King, His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, on his 80th birthday.
In 2008 she was nominated and accepted to take part in Reflexions Masterclass, a two-year photography seminar directed by Italian photographer Giorgia Fiorio and French curator Gabriel Bauret.
In 2009, she accepted a six-month fellowship at the Reuters Institute For The Study Of Journalism at the University of Oxford (UK) to research free speech in Egyptian media. Her resulting paper was called "In the Shadow of the Pyramids: A Case Study of Free Expression in the Egyptian Media, 2004-2009". You can download a PDF of the paper at the Reuters Institute website.
"My photographic interest in a project typically stems from having some personal connection with the subject matter. When I first read farmers were committing suicide in India, I immediately thought of my grandfather who was a farmer his whole life. I wondered what circumstances could possibly drive a typically humble community into seeking such definitive measures? What would my grandfather have done? It was at that point I realized this is a story I had to tell and in December 2009 I traveled to India and started working on this project." This project became “I’ll Die For You”, in 2010, it was selected as a finalist for the Photocrati Fund for humanitarian and environmental photography and the Visura Spotlight Grant. It was also selected in the main exhibition of the Noorderlicht Festival in The Netherlands (Land: Country Life in the Urban Age). Laura has continued to work on and expand this project in Egypt and currently in Ireland.
On February 11th 2011, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down and instructed the supreme council of the armed forces to manage the affairs of the country. Laura had been in Cairo for two weeks, covering the demonstrations, she was in Tahrir Square when the announcement was made
"It was hard. The conflict between being photographer and protestor was always there. It’s not something I can entirely describe in words to be honest. I was really at odds with myself and who I was going to be and do: celebrate or document this historic moment. I did a little bit of both." Her photograph's from this time are a part of her new book, keep an eye on her Instagram feed where she is publishing more excerpt's.
I asked Laura which photographers she look up to now.
"Actually I am most inspired by music and painting rather than other photographers. Of course there are people I follow and find very inspiring. I like the work of Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Miguel Rio Branco, Jeff Jacobson, Rebecca Norris Webb and Didier Ben Loulou."
"What motivates you to keep going out and taking pictures?"
"Well, I suppose it’s the sense that I feel strongly about a certain issue and I have to express it – I have to go on the record as making a statement about it."
"In another interview you said "I spent a long time feeling that I had to prove something through my photography and that took a lot of my energy and it became very destructive for me. It wasn't until I looked deep inside and stopped focusing on the outside that I realized photography could be enjoyable!"."
"I think it’s going from a sense of having to prove what you can do, to knowing what you can do and just doing it. It’s not about what others think but about what you want and what you think."
"Do you believe it has got harder to make a living in the past 15 years as a photojournalist?"
"I don’t know honestly. I always keep myself on the margins of the profession. I am not interested in any of these negative discussions because they are mostly useless. I focus on the positives and keep my head up and work hard."
In June, Laura won a Reminders Photography Stronghold Grant, the resulting exhibition is due next year. At the moment Laura continues to work on her "I'll Die For You" project and is currently putting the finishing touches to her "In The Shadow Of The Pyramids" book.
I asked what the future holds for her photographically. Her reply...
"That is a mystery!"
Here is a list of links to Laura's website and her projects;
Laura's Instagram
Laura's Website
I'll Die For You Project
In The Shadow Of The Pyramids Project
