May 7,
2017, Cairo – The Rare
Books and Special Collections Library at The American University in Cairo (AUC)
recently digitized and made accessible a collection of photographs from the
early 20th century,
featuring a series of images that document major events throughout Egyptian
history, such as the 1919 revolution, the Flower Festival of 1914; the
coronation and burial procession of Sultan Husayn Kamil, who ruled Egypt from
1914-1917; and other scenes depicting everyday life in Egypt at the time.
“It
is a really neat collection because it allows one to trace the development of
Cairo over time and can act as a comparison to modern-day Cairo,” said Mark
Muehlhaeusler, director of Center of Excellence for Middle East and Arab Cultures
at the AUC Library, indicating that shop signs in different languages represent
an international community present in the city. “Cairo appears to be very
international at the time, much more so than it is today. The cosmopolitanism
of Cairo translates very clearly in these photographs.”
The
48 photos of the 1919 revolution, with groups marching and protesting in the
street appear to have been taken from a balcony. Ryder Kouba, digital
archivist, who was responsible for managing the digitization of the collection.
noted that it is difficult to make many historical conclusions because of the
distant vantage point, but the photos “help to create a visual and imagine what
the protests were like at the time.”
The
photos feature people marching, holding placards and banners. “What does strike
me is that the demonstrations appear quite orderly for a revolution,” shared
Muehlhaeusler. Most of the slides portray protesters simply standing or
walking.
Just a year ago, while browsing through an antique
shop in Maadi, Muehlhaeusler
stumbled upon a 20th-century Taxiphote machine, a mechanical device used for
viewing three-dimensional photographs. Each slide is composed of two photos,
side by side, taken from different angles so as to create
the illusion of three-dimensionality when the slide is viewed through the
lenses of the machine. Along with the machine, Muehlhaeusler was able to
acquire a series of 800 stereoscopic slides, a collection of photographs taken
between the years 1913 and 1921.
“The
photographs provide us with snapshots of social life in Egypt at the time and
the unique aspect of these slides is that they are a personal collection, so
they don’t exist anywhere else outside of AUC,” said Kouba. The images seem to
indicate that the photographer was of a high social class, noted Muehlhaeusler,
indicating that a villa and car can be identified in the photographs, which
depict the photographer’s travels to France each summer.
“The photographer of this collection was
actually particularly organized, writing brief descriptions in French and
numbering each slide,” Kouba said. This helped to make the process of
digitizing the photographic slides a relatively quick one.
“An
interesting point to put across is that digitizing does not just mean scanning
a photograph,” noted Muehlhaeusler. It is also the challenging and
time-consuming process of creating the metadata, or descriptive data, to
accompany the digital collection, he said.
“We
try to anticipate how scholars might use the material and try to make the
images accessible for that purpose,” explained Muehlhaeusler. “It can be a bit
of a challenge because we can’t serve all potential purposes in the same way.”
“These
photographs lend themselves to serious study because they do portray everyday
street scenes and average daily life,” said Muehlhaeusler. He noted that the
material could be of use for an architectural study, allowing one to
concentrate on the buildings and monuments highlighted. It might also be of
interest to someone in migration studies. “There are many images of migrants
coming to Egypt from France, which is a total reversal from the present day
where we see people crossing the Mediterranean to the other side,” he noted.
The digitized collection, featuring scans of the
stereoscopic slides, is accessible on the Rare Books and Special Collections Library website here.
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