As Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule drew to an end last month, attention turned to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the home base for thousands of young revolutionaries. Photographer Micah Garen was there, on the ground with the wounded yet unwavering protesters. The portraits that follow attest to their sacrifice and their resilience. After arriving in the midst of the protests, I started photographing injured activists during a large demonstration in Tahrir Square on the morning of February 4, known as the Day of Departure. The number of protesters changed day to day, hour to hour, but there were probably a quarter to half a million people packed into the square on that particular Friday.
Over the past few days, there had been a huge amount of activity within the square and fighting still happening on the periphery, where there were about half a dozen entrances. Protesters had set up barricades to protect the people inside from pro-Mubarak thugs, who were throwing rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails and trying to break into the square. During the height of the fighting, it was difficult to keep up with the number of activists injured on the front lines of defense. Doctors and volunteers, who had set up makeshift clinics and hospitals inside the square, treated the protesters’ wounds—one of the most common being eye injuries due to the shotgun pellets being fired by police.
As protesters swarmed in all directions, I set up a large-format camera in the center of the square and then later near the hospital, photographing bandaged passersby. It was too chaotic to speak to every individual, but those I encountered seemed anxious and doubly motivated by their wounds to get back to the protests, with some viewing their bandages as badges of honor. Even though they were very willing to be photographed, they immediately wanted to run off into the fray again. People in the square weren’t standing around; they were engaged in a number of different self-organized activities, from protecting the perimeter to helping at the hospital, to bringing in food and blankets. In essence, they had set up a small, Utopian city, where they were interacting with each other in this leaderless, self-organized system. It wasn’t just a protest. It was a model for how they wanted Egypt to be. It was a chaotic but somehow working system. I truly had this feeling of being surrounded by people drawn together by the strong ideals that they wanted to achieve. The atmosphere was extremely charged and fast-paced, changing minute by minute.
The concept of being self-organized and leaderless made the revolution a success. That was the aspect that fascinated me most. These anonymous people in the photographs—they are the ones who are so important. I may never see them again. I may never know who they were. But they’re the ones who made the revolution happen. I could have picked virtually anyone out of the square and each one of them would have been incredibly and equally as important.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/04/egypt-protesters-slide-show-201104#intro
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