
Cara Weston, “Face Passing By”, Seattle, 2015. Source: lumieregallery.net
Cara Weston, “Face Passing By”, Seattle, 2015. Source: lumieregallery.net
By Youssef Rakha
Roy Andersson, Train Station, 2019. Source: artsy.net
Elliott Erwitt, New York City, 1953. Source: magnumphotos.com
Tyler Shields, “The Lady and the Lion”, 2019. Source: guyhepner.com
Istanbul by Ayhan Ton. Source: instagram.com/ayhanton
There is no escaping the fact. Since 2011, I haven’t been in downtown Cairo except twice, heavily sedated and only for as long as it took to run my unavoidable errand. With the help of medication, my condition had improved enough for me to go there frequently when the protests started in January that year, instead of being confined to Heliopolis as usual. After I was shot with a pellet gun and had to run away from hospital on the first day of protests, for a few weeks I returned to the hotspots of the revolution, but tear gas, shooting and all kinds of attacks often forced me (along with everyone else) to run for my life. This fucked it all up again, in time. Protest hotspots became indistinguishable from vast, crowded spaces too far from home. And, succumbing to my terror of both, I confined myself to Heliopolis.
Andy Warhol, “Purse and Glove”, 1952. Source: adambaumgoldgallery.com
Stanley Llewellyn Wood’s illustration of Doctor Nikola by Guy Newell Boothby. Source: British Library app
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Nan Goldin, Blue, from “Blood on my Hands”. Source: sleek-mag.com
Elliott Erwitt, New York City, 1977. Source: magnumphotos.com
I can only relate poems to dreams,
that’s why the last three years
I had a few of them
though I’d already denounced myself as a poet;
because escaping from consciousness
is like escaping from the self,
it doesn’t go past skin’s borders.
I’ve counted masturbation sessions as though counting sheep,
without calculating mean or median
or any statistical tricks.
I wanted to say, Love you,
but it came out, Fuck you.
Maybe we can have dinner some time?
Kaveh Golistan, from Untitled Prostitute Series, 1975-77. Source: time.com
Shakespeare Quartos Project. Source: Wikipedia
Literary Magazine Interviewer: First question. Do you see yourself as a “promising young writer”?
Promising Young Writer: That depends. Do you mean “promising” or “young”? You can easily apply both to me, or dismiss them. It’s a matter of perspective.
LMI: Let’s see, then. How old are you and what have you written that’s promising?
PYW: Well, I’m 28. So far I’ve written two books of poetry and one of short stories. I don’t like to evaluate my own work. It depresses me. And you can’t be objective about it. But it’s easy to say that I like only two poems in my first book, the rest belonging to the realm of lame beginnings. Maybe I will have a view of my two later books after some time. I guess it takes time to see your own writings as external objects so you can evaluate them as you evaluate other things. Actually, I admire and hate my own work with equal force, and that applies to everything related to myself. I also finished my first novel, the first part of a trilogy. I’m in the process of publishing it now.
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Philip Jones Griffiths, 1995, Japan. A wristwatch, now preserved in the A bomb Museum, records the time of the blast. Source: magnumphotos.com
Hans Memling, Scenes from the Passion of Christ, oil on panel (1470-71). Source: artbible.info
Saul Leiter. Source: twitter.com