thanks and giving

2.12am. forever exhausted. tonight was "thanksgiving" i remember a small piece of turkey within chicago house, i remember stellar mashed potatoes, squash, beets, and something resembling coleslaw. too many cigarettes. too many whiskey cokes. sakara. finally i discovered GENESIS bar and it lived up to all of its expectations: the cold-faced Ukranian woman running Kareoke and her amazing child, brown curls and puppy sounds, a gargantuan Great Dame dog passed out on the couch, my voice became shrill from shouting - there was Respect, I will Survive, Justin Timberlake, Oasis, BeeGees and many horrible songs, billiards, drinks i had no money to pay for, after the French mission, being tossed upon someone's shoulder multiple times. pressure points. twisted wrists. more beer. much love. french things i didnt understand. wigs. fake chest hair. these are the moments that seem like a dream to me.

the desert has miles and miles. i have to pinch myself to remember i'm alive. we will get to the red sea. we will swim in the salted waters. pinch ourselves again. beach.

i got paid

Not really. Just a small cash advance to get me through the month. My salary hasn't come through yet because of complications wiring to American bank accounts. At present I have $110 in my bank account. I had to pay a $200 termination fee to T-MOBILE (evil) for a phone that I had in the states for 5 months and that pretty much emptied it out. I am paying minimal loans, but come January most to all of my salary for a couple months will go into eliminating my grad school loans once and for all. Funny, I only went for one year, got no degree, but managed to accrue 30 grand in loans. This is unique to America really, and a real issue for the next 4-8 years of Obama's administration in my opinion. I believe they recognize how ridiculous the cost of American education has become.

I suppose I was somewhat foolish for attending Grad school for a year, but I like to believe that maybe it had something to do with where I am now. Let me remind myself that I am in Egypt. I am not paying rent. I am working my butt off as always, but what a place for adventures and photographs.

I don't want to meditate too long on the difficulties of making it as a photographer in the here and now, because I find myself in a beautiful situation at present, but I worry about the future. There will have to be some major thought put into it - whether its buddying up with a Travel Magazine or an Airline Magazine and freelance articles or really marketing oneself via Photoshelter or other such micro-stock sites or doing a lot of Weddings - but there is a way. In Russia, I enjoyed juggling working at a magazine, shooting corporate parties, teaching English, and DJing. And I barely scraped by - which is how I anticipate to live my life - barely scraping by. For now I have no problem with that. I imagine down the line I'll have to find a way to have a more stable income, but for my young life, this is fine.

My friend and mentor Sean McDevitt is a master of all trades: teaches at Pratt and Snow Farm (an arts summer camp in Massachusetts), works at a studio in Manhattan, DJ's weddings, bar mitzfahs, parties, and works as a Mac technician. All at once. And somehow manages to make art and have a great life and an awesome wife. I really admire that. He was the one who turned me onto photography and it is in that spirit that I'd like to follow. Some kind of Renaissance woman existence that combines white water, photography, travel and DJing. Mmm. Delicious.

goals

i kind of feel like i haven't taken a good picture since i've been here. now i know that's not true, but that's what this place does. there's an amazing picture around every corner, alley way, in every face, and on every doorstep. its everywhere. i've never been so visually overwhelmed before. today we took a ferry to the west bank - the other side of the nile, and then rented bikes for a couple bucks and rode them through sugar cane fields and down dirt roads, passing huge ancient egyptian statues as we went, boys on bicycles riding up next to us and having conversation, motorcycles whizzing by every other second, cats, dogs, women in burkas. this is where i live and i want to keep it forever. as always i have that horrible sensation (that i've had my whole life) like i'm letting everything pass me by. like i'm not stopping to get that (at least) one amazing shot per day. for me the photographer, this is a good emotion, it makes me stop. but for me as a person, maybe this is a detrimental emotion, as i quickly become overwhelmed by my inability to capture this place within a frame. that is my goal. i want my photos to be more visually complex, to be layered, to have puns, and give you immediate gut reactions.

thankfully, i think i can do this. i met with my boss this weekend, she came down from cairo for a couple days and she caught me at the computer attempting to remove every last spec of dust from a talatat block photo. we had been arranging to meet for days now and she just happened to graze by my computer. i barely got the words "Shari, I...." out of my mouth before she said "No. Sara, you don't need to do that." and that was that. the last two weeks or so I had been killing myself painfully editing each talatat block in Photoshop, removing dust, straightening the letter board, blah blah blah. And now it comes - freedom. I am no longer an appendage of the imac or the chair. I can be me again.

so i think my stomach is recovering and i will have time to go out into the market every day and that will be my goal. it doesnt matter how crap i feel - i will go out with my camera and my flash (because i need to learn how to properly use it in a crazy crowded situation) and i will get at least one ridiculous photograph a day. right?

Horizontal is the new vertical

It's 4.44pm on a Thursday - November 6th to be precise. It's about 80 degrees outside and extremely sunny. I'm sitting in the darkness of my hostel room with the lights out and the shade drawn where I make my permanent residence for the next 8 and half months, in the beautiful city of Luxor, Egypt. It is the place of dreams: smash India, the Middle East, and Africa together and imagine the possibilities.

I am stuffed, exhausted, dehydrated, intestinally destroyed, and elated. I'm drinking a re-hydration beverage that tastes like the ocean with sugar added and it will launch me into my daily one hour comatose sleep that happens after lunch and before dinner where I have epic dreams and wake up with a slow thundering heartbeat. Often its just a walk upstairs to get a towel to clean the photo equipment that leads to me falling asleep with all my clothes on and my industrial air conditioner blasting as donkeys hee haw and the collective prayers of a thousand men droan from outside my window.

Thus far I have had no time. And I mean it. Up at 6.30am each morning and out to the temple by 7.30am where I photograph talatat blocks until 2pm, these are "stone blocks of standardized size (ca. 27 by 27 by 54 cm, corresponding to ½ by ½ by 1 ancient Egyptian cubits) used during the reign of Akhenaton in the building of the Aton temples at Karnak and Akhetaten." Thank you wikipedia. The blocks can be dated around 1350-1330 BC (as I like to say "older than God") and feature a wide range of images, including everything from standard hyroglyphics to images of horses, cows, sacrifice, offerings, kings, and queens. The people I work with are versed enough in Egyptology that they can literally read the blocks as if they were a book - it's quite impressive. Indeed, I have been hired by the American Research Center to photograph 16,000 such blocks. I think everyone has recognized this to be impossible and I feel a little better about my inability to realize that goal. To do that within 9 months, I'd have to shoot about 100 a day, or one every 10 minutes. But each rock must be carefully wrestled from a staggering stack inside a cave-like magazine so that it can be documented, treated with various resins and chemicals, given a unique number, and cleaned before it gets to me, where it must be properly leveled, dusted off, and lit with the studio lighting to highlight all of its relief/detail before I can move on to the next rock. All of this under a tent in the desert of Karnak Temple.

The most amazing thing about working in this place is the way you are surrounded by mind-blowing artifacts and its not like they are always set aside as tourists attractions, much of the time they are just an inherent part of the landscape. Just outside the ARCE hostel for example is a huge trench that resembles a huge moat or a miles-long empty swimming pool with a dust floor featuring beheaded Sphynxes for as far as the eye can see. They are not set apart from the city, but instead intermingling with sleeping dogs, horses, children playing soccer and stick fighting, even karate lessons.

While I am completely overwhelmed and underslept I feel very blessed to be here. I love my day job. This is by far the best I've ever had it. Sure I don't have a long line of amazing work to brag about, I've scooped ice cream for famous people in New York City, served up delicious Jerk Chicken Sandwiches and Lattes at a cafe in Brooklyn, worked on an English Magazine in St. Petersburg and freelanced for the St. Petersburg Times and taught English to hip elite business men and women there. So this basically blows everything out of the water.

The challenge for me will be to make my time here work for me. I came into this job thinking I'd have too much time on my hands, that I'd take up some stoic monastic life studying Arabic and teaching myself to play the guitar in my room. The reality is I have zero time and I have to find a way to change my workflow around so that I can put aside time for myself - for exploring this place, photographing it, and other activities. I cannot get too wrapped up in my work to let the opportunity pass me by. Thus far it's been staying up until 11pm dusting talatat in Photoshop and straightening images and fixing backgrounds and black levels. I will meet with my boss tomorrow to figure out how I can do my job without investing 12 hours a day into it.

There is always a running list of extra-curicular activies to be had - beyond the little favors: printing some photos of the guys from work, helping the guy at Karnac with his Russian in exchange for Arabic, taking the birthday girl out for dinner, going to the market for necessary fabrics and accessories - beyond that there are bicycles to be had, to take a ferry out the West Bank (the other side of the Nile) and ride through the sugar cane and photograph, get some motorcycles and drive over the bridge miles down the road, rent a hot air balloon and sail a mile high above the city, which is caked in satellite dishes and epic sunsets. A trip to Morocco here. A jaunt to Uganda there. A New Years visit to St. Petersburg?

There is too much. Too much. And free cappucinos from the kitchen. Tuesday, actually, was the first day I actually resented not being in America. I stayed up until 2am to catch the first polls of the Presidential Election come in and then I was up at 6.30am watching Obama give his acceptance speech, almost in tears, before I had to run out to work. I would have liked to experience that in America, the excitement, but I'm getting it from all the over here, where Obama is championed by the Egyptians and they are still congratulating me on his victory. They, like the rest of the world, recognize what this means. Things are going to change.



I will be back in July. By that time, America will have gotten a taste of Obama-style government. It will be interesting to see if the same spark that is lit in the hearts of Americans and foreigners is still lit then, because as he said, the road ahead is long and hard, but I have every faith in Obama, his administration and the country's ability to bounce back. I, like Michelle Obama, would be one to say things like its not until recently that I've felt truly proud of my country. I know she's gotten a great deal of flack for that statement but the last 8 years have been rough and ideal-shattering. I want America to be regarded with respect and admiration again. I don't want to be associated with my country's abominable actions in Iraq and Guantanamo. Now, for the first time in years, I am proud to say that I'm an American, because I know that this image of us has changed. The enormous strength and convictions of one man and all the excitement, hope and positive energy he evokes has transformed the game.



I am excited about returning to America someday. I probably won't make it my permanent residence until my old age, but I love what's happening there. For now though, I like this life. I have always been interested almost solely in two things: photography and travel. If this is the way to do it then I'm sold. This place is amazing.