With an estimated 40-50 percent of the total population of 80 million Egyptians living under the poverty income line of $2 per day, many people depend on heavily subsidized bread provided at distribution centers and bakeries across Egypt. When prices doubled in early 2008 because of a variety of inflationary factors, even more people relied on the subsidized bread than normal, forcing Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak to convene emergency cabinet meetings to address the problem of the "Egyptian bread crisis," even ordering the army into action to bake bread for the country's poor.

Across the globe, in fact, the problem of rising food prices has gained increasing coverage, drawing stark warnings from the United Nations, the World Bank and NGOs that serious political and social upheaval could result unless dramatic action is taken to counterbalance food prices which have risen up to 80 percent in the past year.

Local headlines had been awash in stories of the crisis all spring and with a dozen deaths that had come in breadline violence, it wouldn't be long before the international press would be on the story.

The French magazine L'Express called with an assignment in May that would lead me 135 kilometers north of the capital, Cairo, to the Nile Delta town of Mahalet Damana. There I was to meet Hamid Khalil, age 46, whose wife, Amal, had been killed in a breadline stampede a month earlier. I made arrangements with my translator and driver to make the hour and a half long drive from Cairo at dawn. That way it was agreed we would arrive early enough to catch the breadlines at their usual peak at around 8 a.m. in the morning.

The magazine had asked for pictures of the breadline where Khalil's wife had been killed along with portraits of Khalil himself. I knew from experience that the breadline pictures might be problematic. In Egypt, the government frequently tries hard to minimize coverage of unflattering stories such as the bread crisis, deploying police, plain-clothes security agents and local National Democratic Party (NDP) thugs to help ensure the government's control over the story. In fact, the government press office in Cairo had gone as far as banning press from officially covering the breadlines.

We arrived a few miles out of Mahalet Damana at around 7:30 a.m. and were met by Khalil's brother who we followed to the village to meet Khalil. The actual breadline where his wife had been trampled--a small cramped space in an alley where it easy to see that too many people jockeying for a limited supply of bread would create problems--had been moved after the tragedy. After seeing that place we made our way to the new breadline, which in fact was two segregated lines (one for men, one for women) at the entrance to a small distribution point.

Out of one hole in the front of the building, a baker sold bread one at a time to a mostly single-file cue of women. Over them stood a man with a rubber whip who, Khalil whispered, was a local NDP thug. Nearby a policeman stood in the wings and both men began to glare as I started taking pictures but didn't move to stop me. Around the corner of the building and in an area out of view of both party thug and policeman were men and boys, more chaotically grouped around a window in a tight space between two buildings, each trying to push their handful of a small bills through to a baker on the inside who would periodically thrust out a small stack of bread to the lucky individual who had managed to get his bills through. In the chaos of that line, I was able to make several quick pictures with minimal interference, everyone distracted by the desperate struggle at hand.

For the few minutes I shot the NDP heavy with the whip and the policeman didn't say anything but it was obvious the camera was making both of them nervous. After a number of decent shots of the lines, it seemed like a good point to cut away for the portraits of Khalil and to walk with him to the site of his wife's grave for some alternate images for the magazine's edit. As we did this, Khalil explained the intense pressure he had been under from local authorities to keep news of his wife's death out of the press. They offered him financial compensation with the stipulation he should publicly deny that his wife had been killed in the stampede. Khalil refused and has turned bravely to the press since to tell his story instead.

After shooting the portraits and a visit to the grave, I looked through the images I had of the breadline and decided I wanted to try to get a few more. Back into the cramped space between the two buildings in the men's line , I tried to hold my ground as men jostled around me to get their bread. After just two or three minutes, my driver signaled me to wrap it up--we were going.

On our drive out of Mahalet Damana my translator explained that the people in line had begun to get angry at the camera and my presence. The NDP thug and the policeman had also seemed to be close to acting too. I had not been so surprised about the thug and cop but I hadn't anticipated the people's anger. Reflecting back on the breadline on the drive back to Cairo the reality of the situation sank in. The poor do not need reminding that they are poor nor do they equate journalism with its potential to solve society's problems. With hunger comes anger, desperation and even violence, all of which I fear we as photographers will be seeing more in the coming months and years as world food prices continue to rise.