Series of 6 cyanotypes on cotton paper, toned with mangrove leaves

This project stems from witnessing a landscape dear to me change. The island of Ras Ghurab has long offered me solace through its rural atmosphere, but in recent years it has been reshaped by urban development, altering my experience of it. Compelled to preserve the landscape in its liminal state, I turned to analog photography to practice what writer Susan Sontag described as 'an elegiac art'.

The process of working with the medium and searching for leaves to infuse into the prints led me to move through the environment with greater attention and care, as a way of taking in as much as I could before it changed beyond recognition. The images are arranged in a horizontal sequence evoking the moment I first noticed the shift: sitting on the shore, gazing at the horizon, and slowly realizing that artificial islands were taking shape, interrupting what had once been an endless ocean view.