Versailles, impressions
I had never seen Versailles. I imagined it would be dripping with gold and plastered with masterpieces; It wasn’t. Masterpieces are in the Louvres. I therefore decided to create images of that which made an impression on me – looking out onto the gardens through uneven antique glass windows.
Raphael Shammaa
I am a fine art photographer, born and raised in Cairo, Egypt and now living in New York.
Approach
My mother used to smoke Players Number 5 from an all-white pack, the brand name printed large in a delicate typeface. She would nonchalantly raise the just lit and perfectly rolled cigarette to her lips, fashionable nail polish glinting elegantly in the afternoon sun.
And as I say this, I raise the camera to my mind’s eye, and there I am with her in that secluded space where all of me is gathered, poised to act, to press the button.
I look, I see, the shutter clicks. It all started as a child, much before I had a camera.
Now I have one; and when I look at my own images, I discern a quest for harmony, for beauty and for peacefulness. As a man who lives through his eyes, this yearning, this insistence is always with me.
I refer to my work as “Images For Their Own Sake”; they refer to nothing and no one outside of themselves; and anyone attaching meaning to any of them does so at his or her own expense.
