"Greta Kirkwood Andresen’s Sands of Time is a beautifully poetic take on the complexity of Africa and the Middle East. The work reflects the interest, awe and compassion felt by Kirkwood in retracing earlier steps over those lands. The insightful texts and poetry that accompany the images draw one into her mind’s eye and its reflection of her deeply personal experience of these lands. One is left with a sense of both the urgency of the political situation in much of the region but also the resilience of human life under the deepest adversity." Dr Lee Salter   Introduction by Raja Shehadeh, Orwell prize-winning author of Palestinian Walks and Occupation Diaries   The Sands of Time is an important part of social history and documentation – relating to our world heritage.   Greta takes us on a journey through the Middle East and Kenya through her photographs and poems, retracing some of the footsteps of her late Grandfather who reported from the second world war in the Middle East for the RAOC from 1939-45. The Sands of Time is not so much about people as it is places, but people are an inherent part of places, leaving everlasting imprints. It equates timeless ancient monuments and wonders of the past with the worship of Pharaohs to recent times with new established borders and occupied territories, dictatorship, oppression, revolution: these old ruins and civilizations – all left in the hands of fate. The book serves as a gateway to the sands of time.   Travelling through the sands of time from Kenya, then later up the Nile from Aswan, to Luxor Temple and the Sphinx and Pyramids of Cairo through to South Sinai in Egypt, crossing over to the vast stillness of the desert sands of Wadi Rum in Jordan, the Nabataeans Petra and Amman, to Israel and the Sea of Galilee, Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock and into the complexities of the occupied territories, and over to Lebanon and the ever resilient Beirut along with Baalbeck the city of the sun, this book maps fragments of the late Ottoman Empire. To be present in the time, this book captures our world heritage as it stand today.   Greta Kirkwood Andresen was born in Norway in 1976 of Scottish and Norwegian descent, from an artistic background. After leaving Norway she lived in Edinburgh for close to a decade to explore more of her British heritage and culture, simultaneously for studies and work.   Her debut book, a portrait of Havana, Cuba combines imagery, with individual pieces of poetry and a journal (published in 2011). Here she tells a deepfelt, poetic and at times satirical story of a city in decay in more than one way. Her many faceted, deeply insightful narratives of discovery, in combination with her decisive photographic eye, creates an unforgettable experience for the viewer almost like being present there ourselves. “a very personal and honestly empathic trip to Havana, Cuba, in some ways obviously a pretty depressing place to visit. Looking at her pictures and reading her story is almost like...