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Magazine Pictures As Sources – صور المجلات كالمراجع

The Karkegi albums contain many pictures, cut from newspapers and magazines. One of the favorite sources of the collectors (perhaps generations of collectors) was the magazine Al-Muṣawwar. In this image, we can see how the album presents two pictures and a piece of news about the “School of the Nuns.” The news is about the demolition of this building, which was once the palace of (ʿAlī?) Sharīf Pasha.

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, 8-VZ-1532 (1)

However, if we look at the original page of Al-Muṣawwar in the issue indicated (14 June 1929) – in a digital copy which is available on the AUC Library Digital Collections website – one can see the original context. On page 4, it is clear that the collector cut the pictures and changed their order. In the original, it is from right to left as the Arab reader/viewer would see it (see about right-to-left “reading” of photographs in this period in Ryzova, 2014). However, our collector reversed the order for the left-to-right, ie. European, viewer and logic.

 

Source: Al-Muṣawwar, 14 June 1929, p.4. AUC Library Digital Collections.

Upon further inspection, it also turns out that the whole issue of Al-Muṣawwar started with damage and destruction in the city. Its title page shows the catastrophic situation after the burst of a water tube in the Rawḍ al-Faraj neighborhood. It is, in general, quite remarkable how closely Al-Muṣawwar followed the changing Cairo landscape in the 1920s and 1930s.

Source: Al-Muṣawwar, 14 June 1929, p.1. AUC Library Digital Collections.

 

Bibliography:

Al-Muṣawwar, 1929

Ryzova, Lucie. 2014. The Age of the Efendiyya: Passages to Modernity in National-Colonial Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

(A.M.)

 

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