Piercing the Architectural Frame

Fascinated by Eastern architecture, London-born engineer K.A.C. Creswell tried unsuccessfully in 1914 to join the Archaeological Survey of India, a British imperial project founded fifty years earlier. With the outbreak of World War I, he entered the British Army’s Royal Flying Corps and was posted to Egypt. Soon after, he was appointed Inspector of Monuments and began compiling an inventory of early Islamic monuments in the region.

Piercing the Architectural Frame responds to and intervenes with an archive of Creswell’s photographs held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. As a fellow invited to research the museum archives, I worked on this series of collages recontextualising Creswell’s photographs in their historical, political context. Taken between 1916 and 1921, Creswell’s photographs show the streets of Cairo as empty spaces with the focal points always being the intricate monumental buildings. In my collages, the local Egyptians and their nationwide revolution against the British colonial rule are the primary subject matter. In masses, they overtake the architectural structures. By juxtaposing archival photographs taken by anonymous photographers during that period, I try to fill the gaps in Creswell’s archive which often features Egyptians as miniatures and scale references. Accompanied by Egyptian poetry from that era written by Sayed Darwish, Hafiz Ibrahim, and Ahmad Shawqi, the series thus accentuates the voices of Egyptians revolting against the colonial oppressors and calling for reclaiming their heritage.