Van Leo was an Armenian-Egyptian studio photographer, whose portraits of Egyptian cosmopolitan society evoke the glamour and flamboyance of 1950s pre-revolutionary Cairo, during the last years of the British occupation of Egypt. However, Van Leo’s main subject was himself, and over fifty of his extraordinary self-portraits make up this exhibition at University of Brighton Gallery. Having grown up in the largest movie industry in the Middle East, Van Leo created self-absorbed and narcissistic images that enabled him to play out different film roles, from femme fatale to gangster, from Sam Spade to Zorro.
At a time of massive upheaval in the Middle East as a whole, Van Leo's extraordinary self-portraits could be seen as a reflection of the multiple possibilities that faced Egypt at a deeply uncertain moment in its political history. A University of Brighton Gallery Exhibition in collaboration with Brighton Photo Biennial.
Van Leo was an Armenian-Egyptian studio photographer, whose portraits of Egyptian cosmopolitan society evoke the glamour and flamboyance of 1950s pre-revolutionary Cairo, during the last years of the British occupation of Egypt. However, Van Leo’s main subject was himself, and over fifty of his extraordinary self-portraits make up this exhibition at University of Brighton Gallery. Having grown up in the largest movie industry in the Middle East, Van Leo created self-absorbed and narcissistic images that enabled him to play out different film roles, from femme fatale to gangster, from Sam Spade to Zorro.