In Context.

My work begins with questions around home, belonging and the human condition. Photography has become the language through which I try to understand them.

Growing up between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United States and the United Kingdom taught me that identity is rarely fixed. That sense of movement: between cultures, histories and emotional landscapes, continues to shape how I see and how I make.

I work across photography, moving image, sound and books, often allowing these mediums to exist together rather than independently. I’m interested in the spaces where documentary meets memory, where the personal becomes political and where visual storytelling can move beyond the single image.

I began my career as a newspaper photographer in the United States before moving to Cairo in 2005, where I started what became In the Shadow of the Pyramids. Since then, my work has explored themes of home, identity, environment and belonging through long-term documentary projects.

I’m the first Egyptian recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Award and have also received the Prix Virginia, PHMuseum and I was nominated for and exhibited as part of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. My work has been exhibited internationally and featured in publications including The New Yorker, National Geographic, TIME, The New York Times, Le Monde, Foam and Huck.

Alongside my artistic practice, I founded PLATFORM 2020, a cultural hub with photography at its centre, rooted in Africa, SWANA and their diasporas. It was born from my own experience of searching for role models, conversations and communities that reflected the worlds I came from. I wanted to create a space where these voices are not positioned at the margins but recognised as central to the future of photography and visual culture. Extending beyond image-making alone, PLATFORM 2020 brings photography into conversation with history, politics, literature, music and everyday life. Through education, mentorship, public programmes and collaboration, I hope to create the kind of space I once longed for: where artists can deepen their practice, develop a deeper understanding of themselves and cultivate more self-defined ways of seeing and working.