Shows at the American University in Cairo's Sony Gallery for Photography during the academic 2003-4 touched a range of different subjects, each unique in its own way.

"In Hope and Despair: Life in the Palestinian Refugee Camps" by Mia
Gröndahl was the first show for the year 2003-4 and was inaugurated by
Peter Hansen, Commissioner-General of The United Nations Relief
and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Through the twenty-eight color pictures on display, Mia Gröndahl, a Swedish journalist and photographer based in the Middle East since 1996, documented the lives of Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Pictures were selected from the new American University in Cairo Press publication "In Hope and Despair: Life in the Palestinian Refugee Camps" by Mia Gröndahl and were included in Gröndahl's exhibit "UNRWA and the Palestinian Refugees: 50 Years," which was inaugurated by Secretary General Kofi Annan at the UN's headquarters in New York.

The camera mayya, a vanishing reminder of older times in Cairo, was
revived in the exhibition "Camera Mayya Reborn: An AUC Reincarnation" by
Christian Langtvet. Around 300 miniportraits of students, staff, and
visitors to the American University in Cairo were on display at the
Gallery. The camera mayya process is a "paper-negative instant portrait
system." Cameras of this type were still in operation in recent years in front
of the Mugamma? building in Tahrir Square, providing visa-size pictures,
with a few other surviving cameras scattered around town.

The biggest event of the year was "Creswell's Cairo: Then and Now," jointly organized by The Sony Gallery and The Rare Books and Special
Collections Library. The black and white photographs, which date back at
least fifty years, were taken from the Creswell Collection at the
Rare Books Library, and were paired with color photographs taken from identical positions this past year by a photographic team from the Islamic Art Network. Sir Archibald Creswell devoted most of his life to documenting Cairo's Islamic architectural heritage, and left his collection of over 11,000 photographs and a major body of texts to the American University in Cairo, where he taught for a number
of decades. Creswell is considered the father of the discipline of the history of Islamic art and architecture and his collection has been of great utility to scholars of Islamic
architecture for several decades.

H.E. Sir Derek Plumbly, British ambassador to Egypt, and Dr. Zaki
Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, inaugurated the exhibition. His Excellency the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Dr. Ali Jum'a, and AUC's president David Arnold attended the inaugural ceremonies and the reception that followed. A press conference preceded the opening at which Plumbly and Hawass were joined by Philip Croom, director of the Rare Books and Special Collections Library, and Nuha Abu Khatwa, director of the Islamic Art Network, who outlined the importance of Creswell's work.

Turkey was a common theme in the joint exhibition "Turkey: The Living
Tradition" hosted by The Sony Gallery and The Office of Public
Relations at The American University in Cairo. The Sony Gallery
exhibited thirty-two color photographs by Ismail Kucuk of traditional Turkey. In conjunction with this show, an exhibition of Turkey's ebru (paper marbling) art by Hikmet Barutcugil was displayed at the Ewart Gallery. Both exhibits were inaugurated by H.E. Korkmaz Haktanir, ambassador of Turkey in Egypt.

The Sony Gallery ended the year with "Architectonics and Personae of a
Cellular Memory" by architect Ahmad Hamid, who studied with the
late architect Hassan Fathy at the Institute of Appropriate Technology.
Through photography, Hamid who currently teaches at the American
University in Cairo, attempts to reveal hidden structures. The forty color photographs on display varied from portraits to architectural settings. Some were Egyptian scenes, others impressions of Paris, Zurich, Istanbul, and the United States.

By Nura Bahgat