Des chambres disparues - images from the Hôtel Maffet Astoria, Cairo, photographs by Bernard Guillot

 

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Bernard Guillot (19 September 1950, Basel - 29 June 2021, Paris), French photographer and painter. A graduate of the l’École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris, he received the Prix Nadar in 2003 for his photo book Le Pavillion blanc. His works are in many private and public collections including the Centre Pompidou, Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the American University in Cairo amongst others. He divided his time between France and Egypt. 

Between 1977 and 2003 his work was mainly centered on his life in Egypt, and he came to be particularly inspired by his hotel in Cairo. He obsessively visited and revisited the often bleak and crumbling rooms, capturing images filled with a heavy and mysterious silence, and creating a chronicle of a closed-off world that would soon disappear forever. 

His book of photographs Hôtel Maffet Astoria, Le Caire was published in 1999, followed by Le Pavillon blanc four years later.