Domestic Tourism I: Beach
Maha Maamoun Egyptian
Not on view
Beach (edition 3/6) depicts bathers at Alexandria’s famous Stanley Bridge. The bridge’s construction extended the waterfront roadway over the ocean, while preserving the storied Stanley Beach, a landmark of early twentieth century, golden-age Alexandria. The density of the crowd in the water and the bathers’ conservative dress indicates that the fortunes of the private-access beach have soured and the coastal city’s celebrated cosmopolitanism ceded to a resolutely lower middle class, Egyptian populace. The vibrant blue of the water echoes the image of Alexandria as a popular beach destination even as it absorbs increasingly large and rowdy crowds and rampant waterfront construction. The bathers strike poses that are reminiscent of Renaissance genre painting, inserting the scene within a history of image-making that seems out of sync with the subject.
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