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Young Photographer Finds Abstract Art in Egyptian Architecture

Award-winning 21-year-old photographer Yasser Alaa Mobarak captures the gorgeous colors, shapes, and textures of old houses in Alexandria.
Images courtesy the artist

When is a building more than a building? In 21-year-old photographer Yasser Alaa Mobarak's new photoseries, Simplicity, old homes in Alexandria, Egypt become a buffet of colors, shapes, and textures, rather than strictly snapshots of the neighborhood. "I consider this series as abstract and not architecture," he tells The Creators Project. "In Egypt, we have modern buildings like everywhere else but in this series, I focus on the beauty of the simple and traditional houses."

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His images offer a stark contrast to Egypt's lightning-fast modernization, seen in the pyramid-shaped Zayed Crystal Spark skyscraper and the complete relocation of the capital that have been announced over the past few weeks. These abstract photos preserve the past and in doing so, contextualize this transformation.

Despite his age, Mobarak has earned an impressive number of photography awards from organizations like the International Federation of Photographic Art, National Geographic Egypt, and Photographic Society of America. He often captures human moments reminiscent of Steven McCurry's work, but Simplicity is closer to Yener Torun's architecture photography, but with a different purpose. As he puts it, "What we photograph in the present will be the history in the future."

Find more of Yasser Alaa Mobarak's photography on Flickr.

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