"Two years before my first assignment for Aramco World, I was standing in the middle of the Nile with two presidents looking on, and I nearly died making this shot. Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union were inaugurating the first stage of the Soviet-financed Aswan High Dam.
"After the signing ceremony, the heads of state boarded an old ship. From the top deck,they and their retinues watched as bulldozers pushed the last piles of rocks into the river. When it was nearly done, workmen gathered to shake hands across the gap, and I had to get close for a good shot.
"A large floating hose that carried sand pumped from the desert to the base of the new dam reached out into the river. I had seen workmen walk on it. I could feel it throbbing as I made my way out to where it was anchored. The boat with the presidents floated behind me. Feeling triumphant, I made this image, and a moment later, the hose jerked loose. I dropped flat with nothing to hold onto and fought to stay on as it began swinging like a garden hose. How long this lasted I don’t remember. When the power was switched off, the hose came to rest, and I made haste for shore. To this day I wonder if it was President Nasser who shouted the order to turn off the pump.
"Half a century of unimaginably rich experiences in the Arab and Islamic-related worlds followed. There was so much to learn, and along the way, I have always tried to pass on my impressions, usually in photos and sometimes in words, to bring alive, positively, some of the people and places I came to love."
—Tor Eigeland
You may also be interested in...
.jpg?cx=0.5&cy=0.5&cw=480&ch=360)
FirstLook: A Market’s Port of Call
History
Arts
After the war in 1991, Kuwait faced a demand for consumer goods. In response, a popular market sprang up, selling merchandise transported by traditional wooden ships. Eager to replace household items that had been looted, people flocked to the new market and found everything from flowerpots, kitchen items and electronics to furniture, dry goods and fresh produce.
All the Lands Were Sea
History
Arts
In late 1967, photographer Tor Eigoland traveled for more than: a month, mostly by canoe, among the countless villages of southern Iraq's vast marshes. Now, 45 years later, writer Anthony Sattin calls his photographs a "rare and ethnographic record of a lost world. They bring us back to a time and place where people lived in harmony with their environment and respected the balance the natural world needs to thrive.'
In The Marshes Of Iraq
History
Arts
Amidst "the stillness of a world that never knew an engine... he found at last a life he longed to know and share.