Ronnie Close is a writer and media artist living in Cairo, Egypt. His research interests look at the relationship between aesthetics and politics, in particular in the visual cultures of the Middle East. He has worked on a long-term research project on the Ultras football movements in Egypt, Brazil and Palestine and has produced a series of short films on these marginalized groups. Through visual research projects, workshops and written publications he looks at the role of the image object in the contemporary world. He is an Assistant Professor of Visual Media at the American University in Cairo. He has shown practice-based work in exhibitions some venues include: The Photographers Gallery London, The National Football Museum, Manchester, QUAD Art Gallery, Derby, Brighton Photo Biennial, UK. In 2010 he was awarded a practice-based PhD in Photographic Research from the University of Wales Newport, UK for a dissertation on the visual culture surrounding the 1981 Republican Hunger Strikes in Northern Ireland. He has published articles relating to contemporary issues on image media theory and culture in international journals, such as: MadaMasr, Architecture and Culture, The Philosophy of Photography. His research film projects have been reviewed in Frieze Magazine and PhotoWorks, amongst others. His new monograph book, Cairo’s Ultras: Resistance and Revolution in Egypt’s Football Culture, (AUC Press, 2019) looks at the cultural practices of local football fans and the politics of representation. His writing features in two contemporary edited publications: Photography Reframed, (I.B. Tauris, 2018) and Architecture and Filmmaking, (Intellect Books, 2019).

Media Arts

Cinema/Film

Globalization

Media

Pop Culture

Theory

Urban Studies

Egypt

Europe

Interdisciplinary Research On The Relationship Bet

Arabic (intermediate)

Spanish (fluent)

English (native)

Irish (fluent)