Re:viewing Egypt - Xavier Roy

Xavier Roy's breathtaking photographs of Egypt offer us a haunting vision of a countryand its people. Roy draws us into Egypt's mystique, its scintillating waters, bucolic vistas,ruins, and places of worship. We observe the correspondences of shape and texture,perspective and repetition, light and shadow, and the vitality in the mundane and commonplace.A photograph of an acacia tree is juxtaposed with one of birds in flight, theirformation and movement echoing the outline and feather-like aspect of the tree. The sea,both formless and metallic, can be an expression of the emotions of the woman wholooks at it, or an image of ambivalence and uncertainty, of life and death.