The city of Cairo has more than 20 million inhabitants, but is arranged like a series of small towns or villages, bisected here an there by major roads and flyovers. Few people cross by foot from one area to another. To get to know his city better, each Friday, Nasr and a group of friends take a walk around a different part of Cairo taking photographs.
This has become like a ritual for the group, now in its nineth year. Cairo Walk is a
montage of seventy two images selected from thousands taken by Moataz Nasr during these expeditions, conceived as a crossword puzzle through which he tries to make sense of his surroundings. Images of similar subjects are grouped like letters in a crossword- rows or columns, separated by blank spaces and intersected by other groups of related images. The blank spaces- left black- divide the ‘words’ and also represents the unknowable. Although the individual parts fit together, this is a puzzle that cannot be fully understood.