Modern Miracles

While working throughout Egypt, Degner often heard about miracles and that they come in many forms: miracles that are written about in newspapers, for example, or miracles that are only discussed confidentially. His pursuit of these stories lead him to nearly every part of the country: from cities to villages, from mountains to valleys, from deserts to seas. He diligently tracked even the faintest whisper of a miracle story to its source and sought to understand people’s individual experiences and the apparent purpose of these miracles. Modern Miracles as a project is rooted in a relentless question about material dualism that dated back to Degner’s days as a student of philosophy and evolved into an attempt to photograph the places where the material and the immaterial meet. Today it comprises an extensive collection of images depicting miracles in Egypt not as something rare and abstract, but as everyday occurrences.