Please Let Me Keep This Memory
Polaroids
I keep trying to see Cairo in color again, but it comes back to me in fragments. I think that is why I became so attached to Polaroid. There is something about it that feels very close to memory. Imperfect, fragile, never completely there.
It also feels close to the way I carry Cairo with me now… in small details, half-remembered places, things I am afraid I might forget.
The city has changed so much that sometimes I feel like I am searching for it while I am still inside it. Polaroid made sense to me for that reason. The image takes its time to appear, and by the time I am holding it in my hand, it already feels like something remembered.
These photographs are my way of keeping small pieces of Cairo close. Not to preserve the city exactly as it is, but to hold on to something before it changes again, or disappears completely.
I don’t think this project will ever really end. Cairo keeps moving away from me and staying with me at the same time. No matter how far I go, or how much I try to leave it behind, some part of me is always there.
