Monthly Photos　Dec 2023

Photos taken by ILCAA staff and associates are posted here once a month; most of them are taken during their field research in Asia and Africa.

(The copyright belongs to the photographers.)

Islamic Cairo and Bulldozers

Egypt has a pyramid-shaped demographic structure akin to its ancient royal tombs. In response to urban problems arising from the population explosion, the current Egyptian administration initiated a capital relocation project and has actively pressed ahead with infrastructure construction, including major roads. The wave of urban development has also reached Islamic Cairo, the historic areas. In the background, you can see a mosque built by al-Hakim, a Fatimid caliph. Situated on Al-Muizz Street, a medieval main thoroughfare stretching from the city gate of Bab al-Futuh on the left, this area used to be crowded with shops and apartment houses until a few years ago. A resident of a building fortunately saved from demolition said that a foreign-affiliated hotel would replace those structures. Presently, only Google Maps preserves the daily lives that have persisted since the tenth century, but they will likely be erased with future updates. Seeing bulldozers freely moving in all directions, I reflected on a thousand years of this area’s history.

August, 2022
Islamic Cairo, Egypt
Photograph by Erina Ota-Tsukada