Christian: How the job going? How much of the language have you picked
up? How's the food? Is there a night life? Let me know.
Sorry for not responding sooner. I got overwhelmed all of a sudden, stressed out, exhausted, ill. My to-do list forever teeming with things I said I'd do.
The job is going well. But a big change has happened in the past couple weeks. I work at a "talatat magazine" - a dusty storage facility for ancient Egyptian blocks attached to Khonsu Temple at Karnak. I'm not going to get into the history and significance of the temple here, but I will say that these blocks were re-used in different periods under different Egyptian kings such that many of them have inscriptions or hieroglyphs on more than one side, and such that one side can be right side up and then you rotate the block and the next side is upside down. Hmm. Up until a couple weeks ago we were working at a leisurely pace, I would photograph the blocks as they came to me. Before they get to me they must be removed from high stacks from inside the magazine, rolled out to our conservators where they dust them off and apply various chemical agents, epoxy on the parts that are falling off and then when they are satisfied they send the block off to our Egyptologists, who take notes on all the things they can: color, what kind of hieroglyphs or imagery or relief is present, what kind of state the block is in, etc etc. When they are all done they paint on some more chemicals "a patch" which must dry and then paint on a 6 digit number. After some minutes, the paint would dry, I would photograph it and then it would get sent back into the magazine. I was shooting 20-something blocks a day like this. With time in between to sit down with my workers and learn some Arabic with a child-size chalkboard and some chalk.
And then. And then word got around that we were working altogether too slow. 16,000 blocks at the rate we were working at would have taken about 4 years. We have 5 months left before my contract expires and they fly me back to America. So Ed, our Egyptologist friend stepped in and we began to brainstorm ways to speed up the process. I remembered in high school those nifty paint markers kids used for graffiti and had a photographer from John Hopkins bring over a dozen. Ed took the conservation paperwork and cut it in half, and lectured the conservators on how each block should take only a few minutes - especially blocks of no apparent significance - plain surfaces with nothing on them. And yes, there are quite a bit of these. Jay - said photographer from John Hopkins also dropped by the magazine to see what my process was and how he could speed up the photography element. So after all this - I'm now shooting 50-60 blocks a day - up to 70 sides. I know maybe this doesn't sound like a lot, but let me explain.
The blocks are heavy. Although they were constructed with the intention of one Egyptian man being able to carry it 3,000 years ago, nowadays most require two people to carry over to my table. Unless you want a hernia. Then the talatat face must be leveled. My table consists of a sandbox on top of a big screw so I can spin the block around to face it to the camera or face the 2nd side. The sandbox makes leveling the rock easier, as I can simply shift the level by shuving sand under one side of the rock, or propping it up with a wooden wedge. Sometimes this whole process takes all of 10 seconds. Sometimes it can take 10 minutes. Since some of the rocks are fragments, you have to find some indicator on the inscription of the rock as to what should be horizontal or vertical - some hieroglyphs, a seemingly horizontal line, etc etc. Sometimes you have to call on the Egyptologists to make this call, sometimes you don't, sometimes you make mistakes and you have to fix it in the computer, or, if the mistake is really bad, you might have to reshoot the block.
In any case, after the block is leveled, we use a mirror to make sure the face of the block is flesh with the camera lens. This involves having one of my workers (I'll talk about them below) hold up the mirror against the rock and looking through the lens and telling them to swivel the table to the left or the right until I see myself in the very center of the frame. It looks kind of like this:
Once this is set up, then we hang a board on the table (we glued a big fat magnet to the back of it) with the 6 digit number of the rock, a color patch, and a small scale to show the size of the block. Then we dust the black fabric off with a paintbrush and a blower brush. Then I shoot the rock. I've got the pavement spraypainted at various places to dictate where the camera should be depending on which way the rock is facing and the same for the Elinchrome lamps I'm using. Until recently I would do a lot of shuffling around, changing the power on the lamps or changing their position until I got the talatat lit exactly the way I want it. But since Jay came by, I've ditched this for the most part. Now I stick with the two to three lighting scenarios, sticking with the spraypaint marks on the ground and only varying this if the rock is exceptionally unusual (sometimes it truly is necessary, or the block is upside down because of fragile areas and has to be lit backwards and flipped in Photoshop). Right.
If there is more than one decorated surface, I do this all over again to the second surface, careful to label the various sides of the rock as A or B or C. I jot the rock number down in my Moleskin, the boys chalk a check onto the top of it, and it goes back onto a table until there are a whole lot of them to be carted back into the magazine and stacked in precariously tall stacks.
Like I said, it used to be twenty-something and now the numbers are more than double that, with the administration telling us that we have to double it again. For those that care, here is the number-crunch from my email to Jay:
"Shooting with Owen on Thursday we got production up to 59 blocks and 106 sides - our best track record thus far. Owen is going to try his best to shoot 2 days a week if possible and this will help to keep the numbers up... This week we shot 242 blocks/319 sides - if Owen could come twice a week and work out the patch issue, I would expect production to be up to 280 blocks a week - 1400 a month. If we have 5 months remaining that puts us in at 7000 blocks - add that to the 1700 or so we've done thus far and we're up to 8700." That's half.
I wish I could convey the manner in which we are running around like maniacs. I bust my ass so hard at work everyday that my butt cheeks chafe. That's a first. I actually have to apply baby powder to my butt after work. All of this doubling has definitely changed the nature of the job. Shooting twice as many blocks means I have to process twice as many - which made for a week of working on the computer until 8, 9, and 10pm. When you start work at 7.30 and finish that late it can really put a dent in you. Hence the sickness. The soar throat that never goes away. Irritability.
Before the doubling happened, I used to do a lot of other things like exercise, yoga, post photos, blog, take Arabic lessons, and ride bikes on the weekend and watch films and such. Since then, this has all been cut and my mood, noticeably, has done a bit of a 180. So the trick will be to find a way to keep the numbers up for shooting and processing but still have a life and get healthy.
Before all this I started writing about the job in more general terms. Read this as A Day in the Life before the "doubling" epidemic happened, when things were still pretty easy-going and life was pretty grand:
"There is a certain monotony to it I suppose, but you would be absolutely crazy to say my job is 'boring'. Yarko (dubbed "the Obi wan Konobi of photography in Luxor - quite possibly all of Egypt")
- a photographer who has been working for here forever took me aside one day to remind me that I have the best job in the world. He's right. I will try to explain to you why this is with little success but aside the point, I really hope my contract is extended so I can have another year here. I'm not ready for America and like many of my fellow-expats, I'm not really sure what the hell I'd do there. I have no interest in Graduate School at this point, or interning for some famous photographer, spending all day Photoshopping or keywording his nice pictures from Afghanistan (almost happened in PA with McCurry), in fact the only thing I can actually see myself doing/pursuing in the States is being a white-water river guide in the Canyon or somewhere else. The more likely route for my future is in another country, with my camera, or with some organization aimed to make shit better. But anyway, back to my job:
I get up at quarter to seven every morning, run downstairs for a glass of juice and a muffin, Ed makes some comment about the economy still being crap and what is your man Obama going to do about it, I scoff at him and grab my gear and jump in the company van, we (used to) swing by a nearby hotel where we pick up a group of Italian conservators, at least one of them having worked on conservation at the Vatican of all places. They all come wearing crisp white jumpers and I hear that at their site in Karnak they have nice little mats set up with nice lighting and tables with coffee and tea. Our space on the other hand is less neat I suppose, a tented area attached to the talatat magazine, where I shoot up to 30 blocks on a good day. This is the "monotonous" part, whereas every other aspect of it is not.
We jump out at Karnak where there's usually two dozen tour buses lined up and the morning light is pouring through the temple.
Tour guides buzz around us speaking everything from French, English, Arabic, Japanese, Italian, Chinese, Russian, and other languages I can't make out. We push through the metal detectors and the crowds with gear in hand taking in the same scene every morning.
I work with two Egyptian guys who are very dear to me. One is a 19 (now 20) year old boy by the name of Mohammed - a name which you can call out on any street corner and get at least 5 people to turn around.
I don't have time to do a full character analysis of Mohammed or even do him any justice here, but let's just say he is very smart, a rebel of sorts, and hyper-active. I have stories to tell about him that I will save for other posts - stories involving weddings, motorcycles, etc. The difficult part for Mohammed is not getting bored. He is forever telling stories, a mile a minute, to Dowop, then at some point during the day, when the last hour or two comes up, he gets bored out of his mind, sometimes sitting down with his head in his hands, clipping his fingernails, doing anything other than working. Which is fine, because at that point, Dowop can take over for the most part.
Dowop is a 30-something year old husband and father. His third daughter was born yesterday at 5am and he showed up for work. That is the kind of person he is. His wife was in the hospital. He stuck around for a couple hours until we told him to go be with his wife and new daughter.
Dowop is obsessed with the word "wahad" which means "one". It's wahad miraya (one mirror), wahad forsha (one brush), wahad mezan (one level), wahad Owen, wahad Sara, etnein Dowop (two Dowops, because sometimes he holds up the mirror and there are two of him - philosophical right?). Sometimes the wahad game gets a little old and unravels into absurdity - wahad wahad (one one), wahad kewayis (one good), and he will start talking to himself about various things with wahad in front of it.
Each time we saw Dowop last week we would ask him if the third baby is here yet, and he would say la lesa - no not yet. We jokingly told him that if it turns out to be twins he can give us one baby since he only wants one (wahad bes - just one).
Dowop is hilarious. He has definitive facial expressions and a way of talking and smacking his lips together and a definitive tone of voice that I wish I could convey to you. Sometime I'm going to have Owen video tape our breakfast so that I have a record of this.
Everyday around 10am whoever went out to fetch breakfast arrives back with a couple plastic bags heavy with goodness. For two Egyptian pounds (40 cents), we get a meal of kings consisting of a falafel-type sandwich called "tamia" - super fried bean balls
inside the most amazing pita I've ever tasted with tomato, lettuce, green onion, sometimes some white feta-like cheese, and always some fruit jam. All of this is plopped down on a plastic tarp on the temple grounds that we sit on and happily munch away. this is followed by tea with milk and sugar as we sit among ancient blocks telling stories and trying to communicate in broken Arabic and cherades.
The best is when tourists are wandering around and they see a bunch of Egyptian dudes plopped down on the ground, dipping pita into plastic bags of beans and jam and then see the lone white girl there, munching away. It all looks pretty funny.
How much of the language have you picked up? How's the food? Is there a night life? Let me know. Sorry, but this will have to wait till next time. 11pm is here and my throat is collapsing in on itself and my head is throbbing so I've got to call it a night. Sis - I hope this suffuses for never writing you enough or posting enough. Good news is me and Owen are going to get our own flat soon, which is going to improve our situation immensely. More on that later. Thanks to everyone for being patient and not getting too pissed when I don't respond to emails or write about "what it's really like". I intend to post to this religiously. Thanks for reading. Love, Fleur.
