As stated in the Image of the Month for April 2023, part of the attraction for my taking a job in Cairo, Egypt, back in 2014 was that I felt that it could be a fun opportunity and project (when not at work of course!) to improve my photographic skills by documenting many of the traditional ways of life in Egypt before they are gone forever.
When my wife and I had lived in Cairo previously from 1987-1989 in the suburb of Mohandessin, I would occasionally visit the weekly camel market (Souq al-Gamaal) in the adjacent suburb of Imbaba early on a Friday morning. A lot of camels would be transported by train from Upper Egypt and Sudan to be traded, one would see long trains of wagons in the railway sidings at Dokki en-route to or from the market. In those days the market was just starting to appear on the tourist circuit, and occasionally there would be a couple of minibuses of tourists gingerly wandering around gawping at the sights.
25 years later and living in Cairo again, I learnt that the camel market was no longer at Imbaba due to the urban spread of Cairo, but was now in the suburb of Birqash, some 35km northwest of Cairo. My work colleague, Mostapha, kindly agreed to show me the way and take me to the new market at Birqash one Friday morning. It had changed – it was much bigger, and in a semi-rural location, and very much not on the tourist circuit.
Definitely not a place for vegetarians to visit! Choose your camel, and you can have it freshly butchered before your very eyes before taking it home in plastic bags – but still a great place to take photographs. There are camels rounded up everywhere, often hobbling about with a front leg doubled back and tied up, with the camel traders keeping their livestock in order by beating them hard with wooden clubs. And there are the brokers and traders bargaining and dealing in small groups everywhere. If you are sharp enough, you may see a deal being struck, and a large wad of money changing hands. But don’t be fooled by appearances – despite the grime and the dirt, this is a big money operation, and more than one trader arrives in his Mercedes or BMW, slips on a grubby old galebeya and goes in to trade camels.
The gentleman in the photograph was one of a group of onlookers at a dispute between several of the traders. A crowd had gathered, all offering opinions on the dispute. Clearly most of them like the gentleman in the photograph considered themselves knowledgeable experts on trading in camels.
The early morning light was slightly hazy with a pale sun, (the photograph was taken just after 07:30 in the morning), with clouds of dust kicked up by the camels mixing with the cigareete smoke of the traders – all very atmospheric. I was trying to be discreet watching everyone from a distance, trying to capture all the activity and so was using a long lens to close in on the camels as well as the people, and trying not to be obtrusive.
This particular gentleman had a lot of character and looked to be older than the rest, so I tried to discreetly track him with my lens without being too obvious – and then suddenly he looked up, glancing at something just behind me. Fortunately I was ready for him with my camera, having lined up the potential shot when he had his back to me moments earlier. ISO-200 because of the light, 1/750s and f4 because the camels are always moving and I only wanted a shallow depth of focus so that the backgrounds to my images were fuzzy enough so as not to detract from the main foreground subject. And I caught him!
This image is a personal favourite of mine. I like it because with his weatherbeaten face, he has seen it all before. The long bony fingers holding the roll-up cigarette, the slightly tatty woollen headscarf, and the formal jacket worn over the galebeya all add character. But for me, what especially makes this image work as a portrait is the far-away look in the subjects eyes, and the thin wisps of cigarette smoke – he is relaxed and not stressed by the dispute taking place in front of him, it is a familiar scene that he has probably witnessed or even been directly involved in many times before in the past.
The large aperture and shallow depth of field have all contributed to make the characters facial features pin sharp, helped by the way that the headscarf totally surrounds his face and provides a focus for the composition, drawing the viewer in to the subject’s eyes. What is he looking at? What is he thinking? What life have those eyes witnessed in the past?