“I am 30 years old and Mubarak was the only president I ever knew,” says Laura El-Tantawy, an Egyptian photographer who, despite living in both Britain and the US for the past five years, has been working on a long-term personal project about her homeland. “You start to think of him as less of a political leader and more as a family member, in a very twisted way.”

In February Burn, an online magazine curated by Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey, commissioned her to go back to cover the protests in Cairo. She spent 11 days in and around Tahrir Square, photographing the demonstrators, like many other photographers, but also the unique spirit that echoed across the country. “This is the story of my generation of young Egyptians who have felt like foreigners in our own land,” she wrote in Burn.

“I needed to be part of this and have it in my memory because I think it’s going to change everything for Egypt,” she tells BJP. “It feels like a huge victory for all Egyptians. When, on 11 February, Vice President Omar Suleiman gave his speech announcing Mubarak’s resignation, you could see the way people were carrying themselves. Their shoulders were broader and their heads held high. Before, all I could see was sadness and hopelessness in people’s eyes. It’s a completely new chapter.”

This new chapter is one of many she has planned for her project on Egypt, which she began in 2005 when the country held its first partially democratic elections in a generation, and when protesters first took to the streets calling for a change in government.

“When I started, the idea was to try to understand this place after being away for so long,” she says. “I think all of my work is personal, but this one was even more personal because it’s about me trying to find myself in this confusing place. Because, obviously, my ideas had changed after I left for a more liberal culture in America. Coming back, I was getting into discussions with people about politics and religion, and I kept on thinking, ‘Have I changed that much?’”

Crowd from above, 08 February, 2011. Anti-government protesters gather in Tahrir (liberation) Square around the early morning hours and engage in political debates about the future of the country. Image © Laura El-Tantawy.

Up until 2011, El-Tantawy’s project focused on that sense of hopelessness she found in her native country. She had covered the first wide-scale pro-democracy protests in 2005, which, she says, was only the beginning of Egypt’s transformation, culminating in Mubarak’s resignation six years later. But, El-Tantawy admits she is far from done with it.

“If I were releasing this in book form, my work in Tahrir Square would be a chapter in itself – the pivot between my work pre-2011 and what has yet to come. When I go to Egypt next, I’ll probably be looking for something very different than before. I guess I’ll show more optimism, something brighter than what I was previously looking for, because this was not a conflict. It’s a social story about people who were oppressed for more than 30 years and are now finally breathing and expressing themselves freely.”

Visit www.lauraeltantawy.com.