A Photographer Deconstructs Masculinity and Colonialism

Greek theater is famous for its masks. There are several, each with its own purpose, such as the neutral, the comedic, or the tragic. Actors would use them to portray different roles on stage. The photographer and artist Ibrahim Ahmed isn’t so convinced these masks are removed once the performance ends.

Born in Kuwait and raised across Egypt and the United States, Ahmed’s identity is convoluted, and that’s exactly how he thinks it should be. “I’m an amalgamation of all these things,” he tells me. His work explores the complexities of identity, history, and the performance of masculinity and citizenship—both in Egypt and globally. Central to his artistic ethos is the rejection of imposed identity categories and an inquiry into what life for men could look like beyond the confines of the status quo. He’s taken these themes to several solo exhibitions—including at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond; Tintera Gallery, Cairo; and Primary, Nottingham—and has also participated in group shows, including at the Sharjah Art Museum and biennials in Dakar and Havana. 

His series, I Never Revealed Myself to Them (2016–2021), is concerned with both the politics and the nature of visibility. What does it mean to be seen as a man, as an Arab man, as a colonial subject, as an Egyptian, as none or all of those things at once? “When we center the nation-state, we have to pick a side,” he tells me. “That in itself is still centering a colonial legacy. The idea of the annihilation of the self is very important to me because, in a world full of representation and hypervisibility, to be invisible is powerful.” Absence as presence has been a motif throughout his career, which also includes a well-established textile and sculpture practice, with work that meditates on the American dream and inherited codes of masculinity.  

In the first installment of the series, You Can’t Recognize What You Don’t Know, Ahmed deliberately obfuscates his face in his self-portraits. “The idea is not about me as an individual,” he says. “It’s about the individual as representative of this performance of masculinity.” Understanding notions of “Arab masculinity” as inextricable from global patriarchy, Ahmed explains that his work invests in breaking down entrenched mythologies surrounding manhood: “the psychological aspect of it, the grotesque nature of it, and how that is deeply rooted not just in Arab culture, but in cultures around the world.” His images reimagine idealized masculinity, drawing on documentary and studio photography from across Africa and the Middle East; Greco-Roman and Pharaonic poses; and advertising aesthetics associated with men’s clothing. 

Ahmed primarily works with collage, using photographs as a material to “collapse our immediate affiliations” and construct something new “from the rubble.” He calls it an experiment. In Figure #26 (2020), Ahmed pulls a rock with rope, his muscles tensed and an enlarged shadow behind him. With a bare stone background, the composition alludes to iconic classical sculptures such as Myron’s The Discobolus, Rodin’s The Thinker, and, of course, Michelangelo’s David.

In Some Parts Seem Forgotten, the second installment, Ahmed uses archival photographs, predominantly those his father made over a fifty-year span as he was building a successful career as a businessman in the US. He situates these alongside black-and-white studio images from the previous installment to highlight a repetitive history of masculine performance within his family nucleus, as seen in Figure #2 and Figure #5 (both 2020), which show almost caricatured power stances and flexed biceps in Greek statuesque poses. Ahmed appropriates his father’s lens on the world and his belief in such constructs in order to critique the pattern manifesting within himself.

The third installment, Quickly but Carefully Cross to the Other Side, follows a nonlinear timeline where family album images from the ’50s are spliced with those from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. These include photos of a young Ahmed standing by his father in Figure #4 (2020), the scene adorned with a US flag and a classic Western car, allusions to the “self-made American dream” that his father pursued. The work encapsulates a broader discourse on identity, colonial legacies, and the complexities of cultural affiliations. In Figure #3 (2020) we see an American flag behind a lineup of navy men on a warship alongside a classic American car, with the photographer and his father posing together in traditional Gulf attire. Through his references, Ahmed builds on the work of visual artists throughout Southwest Asia and North Africa—including M’hammed Kilito, Filwa Nazer, Huda Lutfi, and Mahmoud Talaat—as well as curators and writers Farida Youssef and Nadine Nour el Din. 

When Egypt was reimagining itself into a strong, Arab nation-state, new ideas of masculinity were adopted from British colonizers, who occupied the country from 1882 to 1965. Egyptian men were disciplined away from traits considered “feminine, lazy” and instead turned into enforcers. “You are a regulator of the system,” Ahmed tells me. For him, living in an Egypt that has gone through multiple revolutions—from Nasser’s reforms to the Arab Spring—shrugging off colonial ideas of masculinity starts from deep within. “It’s not that you’re going to break free from these things because of some academic writing. That is where my spirituality comes in,” he adds.

Ahmed’s spiritual compass guides his work and centers the idea of universality, where the philosophy of an “annihilation of the self” comes into play. He strives for accessibility, emphasizing everyday experiences in his work and deconstructing ideas of the individual. To achieve this, he attempts to democratize his art to reach beyond academic realms; hence the familiar touchstones of the family photo album and the location of his studio in Ard El Lewa, a working-class neighborhood of Cairo. 

Through his collages, Ahmed dismantles the masks of societal expectations, inviting viewers to confront the intricacies of selfhood as they pertain to hypermasculinity and class, and the legacy of colonialism in enforcing them. In Figure #11 (2020), from the third installment of his series, a mosque towers above men only to be topped by a US flag, beckoning us to confront our understanding the hierarchies of power in self and in society.

Read more from our series “Introducing,” which highlights exciting new voices in photography.