John Feeney was quite an amazing fellow — a well-traveled photographer, Academy Award nominated director, cookbook author and lieutenant in the Royal New Zealand Naval Reserve Feeney.It was a family merging of sorts in The American University in Cairo’s Sony Gallery at John Feeney’s “River Man” photography exhibit opening. New Zealand’s Feeney, who passed away this time last year at age 84, lived in Egypt for 40 years. On this night, his relatives from New Zealand and Feeney’s closest Cairene friends were finally able to meet each other.
During what was to be a one-year stay in 1963 to make the documentary “Fountains of the Sun” at the Ministry of Culture’s request, he fell in love with Egypt and didn’t leave for 40 years.
In 2005 Feeney wrote that “most of life’s dreams are not carefully plotted; they just happen and we must be ready.”
Feeney’s photos are a perfect collaboration of all Egypt’s idiosyncrasies, and many pictures capture significant moments now lost from reality forever. . . .
John Feeney photography will be on display at AUC’s Sony Gallery until Dec. 12. His books “Egyptian Soups: Hot and Cold” and “Photographing Egypt: Forty Years Behind the Lens” are available at the AUC Bookstore.
The above page is accompanied by several of the photographs in the exhibition.