Stunning images of ballerinas reclaiming the streets of Cairo.
Dancers reclaim the streets of Egypt through a photography project.
Photographer Mohamed Taher's life has been defined by three wildly different cities.
The first was his hometown of Cairo, Egypt. The second was Savanah, Georgia, home of the Savannah College of Art and Design, where Taher earned a master's degree in filmmaking and embarked on his earliest photography projects.
The third city was New York, where Taher first encountered the Ballerina Project, an ongoing photo series that features classically trained ballet dancers posing on city streets all over the world.
Inspired by the dancers in New York, Taher went back to Egypt and started a photo series called "Ballerinas of Cairo."
At first, he says it was just a visually interesting project to work on. "The photos were just for our sake," Taher explains of the early days of the project, which he works on with fellow photographer Ahmed Fathy. "You see this movement of the ballet dancing and the roughness of [Cairo]. It makes a lot of contrast... It was kind of a niche version of the project."
Taher quickly realized that the dancers in the photos weren't just dancing. They were taking to the streets where they could express themselves freely, without inhibition.
"There’s a huge problem for women in Egypt streets," says Taher. "There’s a lot of sexual harassment ... so now this was a layer of the project."
Posing for the photos gave the dancers room in the street where they felt empowered to take up space without fear.
For women in Cairo, feeling free and safe in the street is unusual.
Sexual harassment and street harassment are unfortunately common occurrences for women around the world, but 99.3% of women in Egypt experience sexual harassment; a number that a UN Women report report calls "unprecedented."
"To be a woman in Egypt is to live with the crushing inevitability of sexual harassment," writes Jen Tse of Time magazine. "The magnitude of the problem is epidemic."
"Ballerinas of Cairo" became more than a cool photo project. Now it's about women reclaiming the streets for themselves.
Taher and the other photographers often include the dancers' stories and voices along with their photos. "We have to give some voices for these women because we tell stories through their dancing," says Taher.
Taher wasn't sure how people would react to the photos, but he says it's been overwhelmingly positive.
"I thought people were going to have some bad comments about it because it’s kind of a conservative community here," Taher explains. "But I was kind of amazed when people encouraged us to continue more and encouraged the girls to dance more."
"We got a lot of comments from girls saying they want to do this, and they were very enthused about it," he says. "They want to dance on the street. They want to feel free. They want to have this feeling of being on the streets again, just walking the street."
Taher says he will be taking the project and its message of empowerment to other cities in Egypt, as well as putting together a gallery exhibition. It's not the work he thought he'd be doing, but it's the work he loves.
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.