Anthony Hamboussi’s Cairo Dream is a visual study in self-reclamation

In Cairo Dream, photographer Anthony Hamboussi offers more than a portrait of a city, he constructs a deeply personal journey of cultural return and self-reclamation. Born to Egyptian parents and raised in Brooklyn, his earliest understanding of identity was formed in the interstices between American urban life and the unspoken codes of a household shaped by another world. This body of work marks a turning point in his life and practice: a visual and emotional pilgrimage into Cairo’s streets, one that seeks not only images, but lineage, memory, and the remnants of a home he never knew.

Over years of photographing Cairo—not from a place of detachment, but from an intimate, interrogative stance, he found that reclaiming his Egyptian identity was less about discovery than recognition. The camera became a conduit not for “objectivity,” but for restoring dignity and specificity to lives often misrepresented in dominant narratives. In the conversation that follows, we speak with him about the ethical terrain of image-making, the legacy of Orientalism, and how street encounters, both mundane and extraordinary, reshaped his understanding of belonging.

You describe Cairo Dream as part of a broader attempt to reclaim your Egyptian identity. How did the act of photographing the city shape or shift your understanding of what that identity means to you now?

My Egyptian family in Brooklyn had our own language, customs and culture. When I went to Cairo as an adult, I found that the streets were unfamiliar but the people were not. The people I met were my brothers and sisters, my uncles and cousins. The people I met looked like me. All I kept thinking about during my years photographing the streets of Cairo were how they shaped my family. How the spaces I saw around me in Egypt could have shaped my life, if my parents hadn’t decided to leave. I spent a lot of time talking with people in the street. These conversations helped me understand the roots of some of the teachings I had in my home growing up. For my mother and father, people in America felt so different that they couldn’t understand their moral and ethical codes.

America looked at us in an “othering” way and created suspicion from both sides. My parents always told me ehna mish zayohoom, “we are not like them”. I think in their minds that was an act of cultural preservation.

You write about setting down your camera with the idea that you could be “objective.” How did that notion evolve for you as the political and social events in Cairo unfolded?

The idea of “objective” photography is a notion that stems from western photography. Photographers like the American Topographic movement of the seventies or the Duseldorff School were known for ideas that photography could be impersonal, unbiased, uninfluenced by feelings or prejudice. These were things I learned as a young photographer trying to find my way. Later I began to understand more about power; how photography has been exploited by people who wish to establish and control certain narratives.

In Orientalism, Edward Said wrote “From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing the orient could not do was to represent itself.” Understanding this has been a mission in my work. When we ask questions like “Who is making the photographs? Who is paying to have these photographs made? In what context are these photographs being shown and to whom?” we approach the impossibility of objectivity. When the revolution began in Egypt, I was in New York. What I saw in the media was the sensationalism of the event unfolding, the actions of protestors and the government in Tahrir Square. But when I spoke with my family and friends on the phone I understood a different picture. When I began photographing in Cairo, I set my camera down in the places where my family lived, rather than where the media was. I used a documentary and formal approach, but the images were not detached, nor were they “objective”.

The idea of “responsibility to one’s community over oneself” feels central to your approach. How did this value manifest in your photographic practice on the streets of Cairo?

One day I went to visit and photograph my father’s home, in El Matareya. I was walking around lost, when someone asked if they could help me. I said that I was looking for my father’s old house. The residents there remembered my father well after forty five years. My father worked for the municipality and drove a truck that delivered water. His community at the time did not have running water. So he would bring the truck to his street weekly and everyone would fill there barrels. The man I had met on the street that day in front of the house told me this story when I mentioned my father’s name. This man was only a boy at the time, but it was part of the place’s history. I wound up having lunch for hours and making relationships with people who welcomed me for no other reason than honouring my family name.

You mention being labelled an outsider in both the US and Egypt. How does that in-betweenness influence your creative process and your perspective as a visual storyteller?

Being in between two spaces helps me to see two sides of the coin. I don’t ascribe to dogma of nation, religion or politics, although I do see my work as a corrective lens for Western audiences. One of the projects that has the been most important to me has been the founding my press, L Nour Editions. I conceived it as a way to address the absence of Middle Eastern photographers in representation and image making, as well as from book production and distribution in the West. My in betweenness and outsiderness, and my understanding of how I am not alone in this “outsiderness” – how being marginalized is structural and by design – informs this publishing project on every level.

How do you navigate the ethics of photography in a city like Cairo? Particularly as someone who carries both insider knowledge and outsider status?

Tourists come from all over the world to see and photograph Egypt. When I think about photographing Cairo, I try to see what hasn’t been seen- especially in a manner that holds dignity and respect. My intent is to show people as human beings, human beings whose leaders and systems have failed them. How imperialism and capitalism has failed them. When I think about the ethics of photography, the first thoughts that come to mind are frameworks of power and privilege, and what my role is within those frameworks.

The title Cairo Dream suggests a kind of longing or reverie. What does Cairo represent to you emotionally, beyond geography or politics?

Cairo has given me a mirror to look into. It allowed me to see myself as belonging to something bigger than myself. My relationship or “longing” to return to Egypt began more from disappointment with the soul crushing capitalism that I am surrounded by in the US, than something romantic. As an Arab, I’m constantly reminded of our struggle and emotionally affected by the politics of our day, as we witness the genocide, a complete annihilation and a global loss of humanity. Although Egypt is far from perfect, it’s people have a soul and conscience even when its leaders don’t. This soulfulness comforts me, and is part of my “dream”.

Were there particular encounters or moments while photographing in Cairo that left a lasting imprint on you, ones that might not be visible in the images but profoundly shaped the work?

Many daily interactions created a profound shift in me. For example, in Cairo you’ll often find uneven sidewalks. I was once walking and took a bad tumble and landed flat on my face. Within minutes, I was lifted off the ground, given a chair to sit in, handed a bottle of water and surrounded by close to a dozen people with a genuine concern for my well being. These small interactions, very different from what you’d experience in New York City, keep me linked to people with my heart. I would say there was always a sense of kindness and generosity that guided my steps through out the making of the work.