A series of 8″ x 10″ or 10″ x 12″ collages inspired by family stories of Jewish life in Egypt in the first half of the 20th century, where my family lived for centuries until the 1950s when the political climate forced them to leave
Original antique glass photographs ,film sheets, 35 mm slides and colored glass mounted on 2″ or 3″ wide lightboxes
The series of lightbox collages are built from family photographs and documents, as well as found antique slides and glass negatives, some of which I hand-painted. These collages illustrate oral histories and stories told by elders in my family about their lives in Egypt as Egyptian Jews in the early 20th century and earlier. The lightboxes function like memory boxes, but they are not my personal memories; they are memories that were passed down to me. I then visualize them through my imagination.
The found slides and glass negatives are antiques from the late 1800s and early 1900s, which I collected from eBay and flea markets. Some depict scenes from Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries that my family frequented, while others show more neutral images, such as houses, interiors, or birds.
In one lightbox, the birds come from a large-format found glass negative, which I layer with texts and slides to illustrate a story my father told me about having a beloved pair of pet pigeons as a young boy in their home in Helwan, in the outskirts of Cairo. The birds went missing after the family moved to another apartment in Maadi, a neighborhood in Cairo, shortly before leaving Egypt for good.
Another lightbox features my grandfather’s Egyptian photo ID alongside a pamphlet from the Japanese Gardens near their house in Helwan. I layered these with images of gardens, a piece of snakeskin, and ancient Egyptian artifacts, connecting my family’s personal history to a broader historical and cultural context.
Another one shows my uncles and grandparents standing on the balcony of their summer house near Alexandria. I placed this photograph behind an 8” × 10” antique glass negative of a house exterior. I enjoy combining family reproduction photographs with original glass negatives and slides from the same era. They add a physical layer of time—the hundred-year-old glass often bears corrosion, scratches, and other signs of aging, which become part of the narrative embedded in the image.
