Smithsonian magazine's 22nd Annual Photo Contest | Made possible through the support of MPB.com

17th Annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest Altered Images
Ruins

In my hometown, Alexandria, the phenomenon of high-rise buildings has spread widely; the monstrosity is on the increase, people have become astonishingly interested in making more, quicker money at the expense of beauty and elegance, the very two elements that were usually found in all of the old buildings of the city, the buildings we and our families and even those people mentioned above lived in, the buildings that witnessed our sweetest memories. Nowadays, material gain is stronger than memories. Almost in every street around every corner, there is a rebuilt structure. Still I am infatuated with the tiny interior details, which haven't been removed yet, of the walls of the neighboring buildings. So, I started to use my camera to document a considerable part of the ruining process of my neighborhood, the old houses, and save them before they are totally vanished and replaced with those modern, lifeless structures and blocks of flats. Luckily, this experience has shown me a new relation among those structures: thanks to the eye-opener, the rebuilding process. Rooms and floors manifest many different abstract compositions, representing different cultures of different eras, specifically from the 1930’s to 1980’s- the period during which all those buildings were nearly built. It is clearly demonstrated in the ruins of wall papers and paintings on the walls mixing with old rusty irons lines.

Photo Detail
Date Taken: 05.2019
Date Uploaded: 05.2019
Photo Location: Alexandria, Egypt
Camera: Canon EOS 60D
Copyright: © Amr El Maghraby