The Palimpsest
Of Intimate Paraphernalia: the photographic works of romany hafez
Upon viewing the photographic works of Romany Hafez,
one is confronted by two “almost conflicting” behaviors:
to watch or to assimilate. This riddle of knowledge versus
the observed was a question that was addressed by two
giant figures of the twentieth century: Ernst Gombrich and
Erwin Panofsky.
In his seminal text Art and Illusion, art historian and
philosopher Sir Ernst Gombrich questions the notions
of “the real”, and consistently asks about the reason
of why some cultures represented “reality” differently
across centuries
Upon viewing the photographic works of Romany Hafez,
one is confronted by two “almost conflicting” behaviors:
to watch or to assimilate. This riddle of knowledge versus
the observed was a question that was addressed by two
giant figures of the twentieth century: Ernst Gombrich and
Erwin Panofsky.
In his seminal text Art and Illusion, art historian and
philosopher Sir Ernst Gombrich questions the notions
of “the real”, and consistently asks about the reason
of why some cultures represented “reality” differently
across centuries, and each time such representation was
widely accepted, despite the difference between the
representation in history: from the Ancient Egyptian style,
to the Greek, Roman, Dark Ages, Renaissance and the
modern times. To answer what he (Gombrich) addressed
as “the riddle of style”, Gombrich hypothesizes that
whoever will focus on the seen / nature will “get it right”,
while whoever will focus on the known will eventually “get
it wrong”.
Romany Hafez drives us to question such proposition:
we are in front of works that are “realistic” as proposed
by Gombrich, where the focus on nature and the real is
omnipresent. On another level, the works are of personal
spaces and intimate places that drive the viewer to
seek knowledge, information, any history or any story.
From the first second as we explore the black and white
photographs, the process of questioning starts: are those
spaces inhabited? Were they ever? Are they still? Will
they remain that way? All those personal elements and
items in the photographs, do they still belong? Belong to
people or to places? The questions need answers, and
answers are knowledge, and knowledge cheats the process
of sheer visual pleasure, and moves with the artwork
from the visual to the conceptual, where questions of
representations are answered by symbols and by codes,
where semiotics and hermeneutics, and the capacity to
read an artwork is required to fully appreciate the work.
To fully read and assimilate –and understand-- the works
of Romany Hafez, Erwin Panofsky’s indispensable three
steps “reading” approach is required to fully capture the
visual text proposed by the black and white works and
format. In his 1939 book Studies in Iconology, Panofsky
proposes all viewers of artworks –especially painting and
photography—to firstly see the work with a clear mind,
and to deduce the meaning from what is seen, only. This
will let the viewer first get the essential data proposed
in the image. Such data can be provided by an image of a
place or by a symbol. In the case of Romany Hafez works,
one is engulfed in a realm of actual alleys, courtyards,
patios, interiors and other living spaces, really basic, yet
intricately arranged –almost staged, though one is sure it
is not the case. The gorgeous finishing of the photograph,
the perfect printing and the finesse in production compels
the viewer to seek information about the context, time
of the shooting of the artwork, and the situation/s around
the creative process. Here Panofsky offers the viewer
with another tool: “the proper meaning requires prior
knowledge of things” involved in such creation. Romany
Hafez leaves us intrigued, and he does not “tell”, but keeps
it to the viewer to deduce any and all scenarios, which in
turn takes us to Panofsky’s third level of reading the visual
text: every artist creates intrinsic information in every
artwork, whether on purpose or by serendipity,
and the viewer here must engage to deduce, decode and
decipher the information to complete solving the riddle.
Romany Hafez in his new photography projects again take
his viewer to a tour between geographical and virtual
spaces, where banal objects take their space --without
any intention of assemblage—within a room, and lay there
inviting eyes for exploration and interpretation of possible
meanings, plausible scripts of what could have happened to
the people who may have occupied the space at a moment
in history. To amplify the riddle, when --and if-- we see the
protagonists in flesh, they are pictured with their backs,
always in motion as if escaping from the photo frame, and
if by coincidence one is pictured in a frontal view, the face
is distant, dark and obscuring the facial expression, leaving
the viewer with more questions, and a definite need to
know more.
Romany Hafez is a collector, and all collectors are
obsessed: obsessed by places, by objects and by banal
elements. Romany Hafez shares his obsessions and
challenges his viewers to deduce meanings, for some
obsessions are pleasurable, and some pleasure is to
collect, to photograph and to share.
Khaled Hafez
Cairo, 2018
Read more
