Fire in Cairo emerged from Egypt as an oblique and fragmentary document of revolutionary struggle. The book charts Connors’ uneasy engagement with the political turmoil that gripped the nation during its rapidly unfolding history.
The complexity of the situation resisted comprehensive explanation, but invited metaphorical speculation. In his images Cairo reveals itself to be an enormous studio for social change, ripe with visual, sculptural and atmospheric residues of resistance.
He weaves these together with portraits of Egyptians from across the political spectrum and his own experimental fiction. The result is a book that careens between reportage, poetry and surrealism to heighten the tensions between beauty, threat and historical consequence.
Matthew Connors (b.1976) is a Professor and Photography Department Chair at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. He received a MFA from Yale University and a BA in English Literature from the University of Chicago. His work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Yale University Art Gallery. He lives and works in Boston, MA and Brooklyn, NY.
Published by SPBH Editions, 2015
148 pp, Hardcover Lithography
19.9 x 25.4 cm
English
