São Paulo – People in the city of Alexandria can visit until January 17 an exhibition that includes photographs about the trip of Brazilian emperor Dom Pedro II to Egypt in the nineteenth century. The show “Back to Egypt: A Brazilian Collection of Photographs” showcases 91 images with information on the trip, as well a video that presents the collection of 300 photos. The exhibition takes place in the East Exhibition Hall of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina Conference Center. Entrance is free.
The show was inaugurated on December 14 by Brazil’s ambassador to Cairo, Antonio Patriota (pictured in the opening photo) and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina director Ahmed Abdullah Zayed. This is the second edition of this exhition, which took place first in the Gezira Art Center in Cairo in late 2021.
The collection owned by the emperor is the first Brazilian document collection to be included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. The photographs are the result of the trip of Dom Pedro II to Egypt from 1871 to 1876. The emperor visited five Arab countries in the nineteenth century. Other countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine also hosted exhibitions on the trip of the monarch to mark the bicentennial of the Independence of Brazil.
At the opening of the exhibition, Patriota said Egypt dazzled travelers over the centuries and picked the Brazilian emperor’s curiosity. The organizer of the exhibition, the first secretary of the Embassy of Brazil in Cairo, Rafaela Seixas, said 2022 was a special year for both Brazil, which celebrated the bicentennial of its independence, and Egypt, which celebrated the 200th anniversary of Egyptology as a science.
Representatives of the office of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) in Cairo attended the opening of the exhibition in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, including regional director and head of the office, Michael Gamal, and the office’s director of International Relations, Rania Mohamed Hagrass.
The venue that’s hosting the exhibition, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, or New Library of Alexandria, was built to recapture the spirit of openness and erudition of the original Library of Alexandria. It opened around 20 years ago.
Quick facts:
Photo exhibition
“Back to Egypt: A Brazilian Collection of Photographs”
December 14, 2022, to January 17, 2023
Every day from 9 am to 5 pm, except on Fridays
Free admission
Find out more here
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
