“Son los suyos relatos visuales que recobran un ayer libre de artefactos tecnológicos, refrescantes en el sentido de limpiar la mirada a través de sus aconteceres elementales, del rescate de momentos cargados de sobriedad y sencillez.
First published in the 1990s, The Egyptian Oases, by the writer and photographer Jordi Esteva (born in Barcelona 1951), has been reprinted by RM in a new edition.
Siwa, Bahariya, Farafra, Kharga and Dahla are the names of Egypt’s five oases of the Lybian desert. Little worlds, where time seems to have stopped, inmersed in legend and endowed with a culture of their own.
Before these Islands in the Desert had succumbed to the onslaught of paved highways, electricity and television, Jordi Esteva undertook to capture their essence. His book explores the particular microcosmos of these anciente localities, even as they were about to vanish, through his own eyes and his personal experience.
“I wasn’t interested in capturing the dunes or the mirages, or the pharaohs’ temples lying in ruins amidst landscapes that would have delighted travelers of the Romantic age… My approach was that of a patient hunter. I waited for the exact hour or moment, pursuing shadows. I wanted to seize the Spirit of the place.”
The passage of time has conferred on the collection of photographs gathered in The Egyptian Oases a testimonial value that speak to us of a vanished world.
This volume has been published in collaboration with the Museu Egipci de Barcelona