A DIFFERENT KIND OF SILENCE: YASSER ALAA MOBARAK
BY AIYAH SIBAY
Yasser Alaa Mobarak, Abstract from the series Church (2016) Archival pigment print, Courtesy of the Artist
In the skin-toned alleyways of Aswan, poised still in the silence between the mud-brick walls of Siwa, a camera opens its shutter, takes one long, deep breath of the air, and exhales with this moment: a tender morning landing against a blue door, still bikes like patient horses in their stables, poised and waiting for a rider, the soft clay of walls returning the memory of the hands that lifted it up against the land. This is the work of Yasser Alaa Mobarak, an Egyptian photographer and artist of compositions and landscapes. Once a photojournalist, now an abstract photographer, Mobarak’s craft is a testament to the active work a traveler performs in his desire to know a place — to abandon the exotified first glance of the one encountering a foreign town and to accept the loss of romantic sentiment in exchange for truth. It is this exchange and this truth that land before us in the proximity of the walls to the viewer, offering segments of a town we cannot see wholly but sense deeply. In the absence of what has been withheld stands what has been given to us: the deep, raw hues, the narrative textures of the surfaces, the shy crevice in the walls. In exchange for the comprehensiveness of photojournalism that leads us in detail through the unknown, we are held in a quiet crowd of textured patterns, colors that mimic conversations within a frame of absence. We may not have the rhythm of this town, but we know the feeling of the walls that hold the life that holds that hidden rhythm.
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Baring ancient ruins of a history that lies in the shadows of modern Egypt, the essence of Siwa and Aswan pours through these still images — each photograph, a breath taken and exhaled miles away. In every photograph we enter, our breaths merge with the breath of an artist in an alleyway, standing unseen in this moment, holding his story and making way for yours.
Yasser Alaa Mobarak, Door, from the series Nubian (2015) Archival pigment print
Door 1, from the series Siwa (2016) Archival pigment print
All images Courtesy of the Artist
To read more, email Tribe for a copy of Issue 14.