Hamada Elrasam is a painter turned photographer with a law degree from Cairo University and a one-year certificate program obtained from the International Center of Photography in New York (ICP). Between 2011 and 2022, Hamada frequently covered local and international news and reported extensively on humanitarian crises and unrest in Egypt, Rwanda, and Greece. His notable contribution to photography has earned him the First Prize Award for his image of a protest clash in Cairo from the Egyptian Photojournalist Society in 2012 Egypt Press-Photo, and again in 2019 for his visual story “Devotion To Mary.
Elrasam has over fifteen years of photography experience. His work has been published by several publications, including IGIHE, Associated Press, Al- Masry Al-Youm, Voice Of America, Agence France-Press, Los Angeles Review of Books, Le Monde Diplomatique, ABC News, Jacobin, Al-Monitor, Truthout, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, Christian Science Monitor, among others.
In 2013, VOA interviewed Hamada on his work during the Egyptian revolution and how photojournalists in the region worked under pressure. In March 2015, Truthout interviewed him for his coverage of the Coptic families of Egyptians who were abducted and subsequently executed by ISIS militants in Libya “Who Stands Behind?”. Then, in June 2015, he was interviewed about his work on Living and Dying After Rwanda’s 1994 Genocide.
Hamada is currently an independent photojournalist and video maker in Cairo, Egypt.
www.hamadaelrasam.com
www.instagram.com/hamada_elrasam
Triple exposure
During the wave of uprisings and resulting crackdowns on Islamists in Egypt in 2013, media outlets were widely accused of taking sides. “When you point a camera to one side, you neglect the rest of the real scene,” a protester told me. “People follow media outlets that confirm what is already in their minds, not to get new information,” he added.
For this project, I photographed events surrounding the upheaval of 2013–2014, including the police dispersal of the pro-Morsi sit-in at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square and the resulting massacre of more than 800 people; celebrations following President Morsi’s removal from power; the 2014 commemoration of the January 25, 2011 uprising; and various protests and marches. I also covered the constitutional referendum, the presidential election, and the trials of Islamists.
I decided to layer three exposures from these events into a single image, allowing the viewer to see multiple scenes and perspectives at once. By bringing different moments, sides, and realities into the same frame, I sought to move beyond the singularity of a single image and toward a more complex representation of events.