Stories of Change: Beyond the Arab Spring
Edited by Kari Lundelin and Rebecca Simons
Schilt Publishing, The Netherlands, 2014.
BY ALYSSA WOOD
“Stories of Change: Beyond the Arab Spring,” edited by Kari Lundelin and Rebecca Simons, documents a project by World Press Photo, a Dutch non-profit organization, which has trained young photojournalists and multimedia artists from North Africa in a series of workshops and then curated the resulting work. The group encourages participants to challenge outside perceptions of the region and to relate stories of the “Arab Spring” from local perspectives. This project features an online component as well on World Press Photo’s “Stories of Change” website. The site features videos (all available with captioning in English, French, and Arabic) and the photographs from the print book. All in all, a beautifully designed and compelling resource.
The photographic and written essays serve as vibrant counterpoints to the images included by wire service photojournalists documenting the “Arab Spring.” Rather than covering the protests or parliamentary elections, they offer intimate glimpses into the daily life of people typically ignored by the media. Featured series include photos and stories of women with the children they bore out of wedlock, a child with Down syndrome, and oilfield workers from the Amazigh (Berber) minority group in Libya.
Another series, by Roger Anis, examines the state of tourism in post-revolutionary Egypt. In one of the most powerful images, garbage clings to a chain link fence outside the pyramids in Giza, a poignant and vivid summation of the failure of the Egyptian government to serve its population. Several of the 11 photo essays echo this sentiment, whether the photographer chronicles the status of young blind women in Egypt or the plight of Tunisian fishermen fighting the practice of bottom trawling in the Mediterranean. In each case the government has proven unable or unwilling to enforce existing regulations that would remedy the situation.
In contrast, the photo essay by Mahmoud Khaled tells a story of success. The residents of the ghetto Ramlat Boulaq, near Cairo’s Tahrir Square, though victimized by both police and developers, have defeated developers in court and against all odds, have retained their homes.
The five written essays in the book prove as disparate as the photographic collection, and include a plea for a day of sexual freedom, a profile of Moubarik Chentoufi, highlighting his promotion of libraries and theater in rural Morocco, an evocative account of a protest march, a description of the commonplace harassment of Salafis by Egyptian security, and a caustic riposte entitled “Revolution for Dummies: A Guide for an Arab Leader.”
As Petra Stienen writes so eloquently in her introduction, “the power of the collection is the power of the diversity of the region.”
This review is scheduled to appear in Al Jadid, Vol. 19, No. 69.
© Copyright 2015 AL JADID MAGAZINE
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