Cairo Dream
Publisher: KGP+MONOLITH, 2025
6.3 x 9.5 IN / 16 x 24 CM
80 pages, 47 plates
“I was born in Brooklyn, New York to working class Egyptian parents in the last week of 1969. When I began photographing in Cairo, my intention was to reclaim my identity as an Egyptian and to engage in a dialogue about the environmental conditions that make up the city of Cairo. I set down my camera in public space imagining that I too could be objective. I was led to question my “American” way of thinking by events unfolding around me: a revolution, a military coup, and also, by the ways and generosity of everyday people.
I came to understand that the social implications of photography are very different in Egypt than in the US. In the US, many documentary photographers make photographs in ways which can be invasive or insensitive to others, because they believe it’s their right as individuals to do so. This way of thinking doesn’t hold a lot of water for Egyptians. Responsibility to one’s community over oneself is something I learned in Egypt.
I am considered an outsider in both countries I belong to. I’ve been stopped, detained and arrested while photographing in both countries and labeled an enemy in both countries; terrorist in the US, foreign spy or agitator in Egypt. The work of making the larger body of photographs which includes Cairo Dream, contains the duality of my insider and outsider identity. This identity keeps me one step in and one step out.”
- Anthony Hamboussi
La Petite Ceinture
Publisher: L Nour Editions, 2025
9.5 x 6.5 IN / 24 x 16.5 CM
322 PP
In La Petite Ceinture, photographer Anthony Hamboussi turns his lens toward a largely forgotten relic of Paris: the 19th-century railway that once encircled the city, now overgrown and abandoned. Far from the polished image of Paris celebrated in postcards and guidebooks, this work explores the quiet margins—spaces shaped by neglect, displacement, and resilience. As an Arab visitor seeking refuge from the prejudices of post-9/11 America, the photographer finds echoes of exclusion and resistance woven into the fabric of the city’s decaying infrastructure. Through haunting imagery and personal narrative, La Petite Ceinture reveals a hidden Paris—one where ruins speak of histories both official and erased, and where beauty and injustice exist side by side. This is not just a study of place, but a meditation on belonging, memory, and the unseen forces that shape urban life.
Cairo Ring Road
Publisher: L Nour Editions, 2020
9.5 x 6.5 IN / 24 x 16.5 CM
402 PP
In Cairo Ring Road, photographer Anthony Hamboussi presents a striking visual study of Cairo’s urban peripheries in the years surrounding the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Made between 2009 and 2014, the project captures a rapidly transforming city during a fleeting moment of relative openness—when the fall of Mubarak’s regime briefly lifted restrictions on public space, and a large-format camera could still move freely through the landscape.
Working along Cairo’s elevated Ring Road, Hamboussi documents the contradictions of a metropolis suspended between decay and unchecked development. His photographs reveal a city defined by informal housing, stalled construction, environmental degradation, and the architectural traces of deep inequality. Yet this is not a story of ruin, nor one of revolution alone. Instead, Hamboussi offers a nuanced portrait of Cairo in transition—its tensions, absences, and aspirations rendered in rigorous, lyrical compositions.
Neither fully outsider nor native, Hamboussi approaches Cairo through the lens of a diasporic Egyptian whose familial roots ground a perspective both intimate and distant. His work resists spectacle and sentimentality, favoring restraint over rhetoric. Avoiding the clichés of both government-sponsored boosterism and Western colonized image, Cairo Ring Road presents an archive of a city rarely seen—its edges, its scars, and its fragile beauty.
This book is a rare document of a city—and a country—caught in a moment of upheaval and possibility. It is also a testament to what photography can reveal when it moves slowly, attentively, and with care.
Newtown Creek: A Photographic Survey of New York's Industrial Waterway
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010
9.625 x 6.5 IN / 24.4 x 16.5 CM
432 PP / 237 color illustrations / 4 b+w
Once a tidal creek meandering through marshlands rich in herbs, grasses, fish, waterfowl, and oysters, Newtown Creek today is a toxic cesspool that brings up raw sewage every time it rains. A tributary of New York's East River that forms part of the border between Brooklyn and Queens, Newtown Creek has long been at the heart of the city's "industrial backyard," serving as home to numerous industries, storage/warehouse facilities, waste transfer stations, and power plants, and as the dumping ground for unwanted byproducts and toxic waste. Site of a 17-million-gallon underground oil spill that still contaminates the area, Newtown Creek is currently under consideration by the Environmental Protection Agency for designation as a Superfund site, but the creek, whose waterfront is for the most part inaccessible to the public, is still largely unknown to residents and visitors of New York alike.
Newtown Creek: A Photographic Survey of New York's Industrial Waterfront is an extensive documentation of this forgotten landscape that shows the evolution of the built environment over five years in more than 230 images. Photographer Anthony Hamboussi followed the creek through the neighborhoods of Hunter's Point, Greenpoint, and Bushwick, shooting over fences and gates where he could not gain access, to record the bare industrial landscape. From the ruins of Morgan Oil and the Newtown Metal Corporation, to the construction of the new water treatment facility, to the footprints of the former Maspeth gas holders, Hamboussi recorded sites that may soon undergo further transformations. His survey captures the creek at a moment in time when gentrification and revitalization are just starting to change the area, providing a glimpse into the history of industrial New York. An insightful essay by Paul Parkhill puts Hamboussi's work into context.
LIC in Context: An Unorthodox Guide to Long Island City
Publisher: Furnace Press (November, 2005)
9.8 x 7.9 x 0.2 inches
72 pages
The culmination of a three-year, multi-faceted public history and public art project, the book explores 54 sites in New York's most dynamic and misconstrued neighborhood. 72 full color pages, including original photographic work by Anthony Hamboussi and illustrations by Monte Antrim.
What is Affordable Housing?
Publisher: Center for Urban Pedagogy (December, 2009)
2nd Edition 2020, includes new images
The What is Affordable Housing? guidebook uses pictures and diagrams to walk you through affordable housing policy in New York City. It includes the first-ever illustrated compendium of NYC affordable housing programs.
PDF download (Spanish Edition) ¿Qué es la vivienda asequible?
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