Rediscovering Buffalo Island

This project was created as a speculative ‘found journal’, documenting the life on an imagined island on the Nile river in Aswan, Egypt. The sketches, and narrative are imagined and fictional, although they are based on the historical flooding of the Nubian settlements after the construction of the Aswan high dam in the 1960s.

In early 2024, a more than 60 year old travel journal was donated to the Nubian Heritage Museum. Within the pages was a series of sketches offering unique insight into life on Buffalo Island, submerged under what is now Lake Nasser in Aswan.

With Hakim serving as translator, I had the opportunity to converse with his father, Ibrahim. At 82 years, he is the oldest resident of Buffalo Island and already grieves for the loss of his home. He says,
“We don’t want to leave but we have no choice. I was born on this Island and I don’t wish to see it die.”
Hakim tells me he is worried about Ibrahim, who is already half blind,
“The relocation will be difficult for all of us, but non as much as my father”