Photographs from the 'Upekkha' series (Art Fund Collection of Middle Eastern Photography)- 1) Armed Innocence II; 2) Spring (Sham el Nasseem); 3) The Break- Photographs from the 'Upekkha' series (Art Fund Collection of Middle Eastern P

These 3 works add to the Art Fund Collection of Middle Eastern Photography at the V&A and the British Museum, which was acquired in 2009 and 2010. The Art Fund has given the two museums grants over £150,000 for the collection and additional support for the tour of the collection. The photographs from the 'Upekkha' series were made in response the events of January 2011 which resulted in the removal of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. ‘UpekkhaÂ’ refers to the Buddhist aspiration of experiencing the world through a lens of equanimity. When the army was called in to respond to the protests centred in CairoÂ’s Tahrir Square, Hammam was struck by the apparent vulnerability of the soldiers. It seemed to her that they wanted to be anywhere but there, so in her photographs she transports them into candy-hued, picture-postcard-perfect settings far removed from the chaos of Cairo. The postcardlike images also liken the events of Tahrir Square to a tourist attraction that drew attention, yet was only superficially understood.