How Egyptian Photographers Are Seeing Egypt Differently

by Alexandra Mansilla

How Egyptian Photographers Are Seeing Egypt Differently

23 Dec 2025

Photos of the pyramids, where you can almost hear the wind moving through the desert. A growing archive of painted walls and folk murals scattered across neighbourhoods. Images of empty spaces that feel suspended in time. A photographic project reflecting on womanhood in Cairo, told from a deeply personal point of view.

Egypt appears very different through the lenses of these photographers. Working across documentary, landscape, architecture, and personal narrative, they approach the country through observation rather than spectacle. Their work presents Egypt as lived, layered, and constantly changing — shaped by people, spaces, traditions, and everyday experience.

Ali Zaraay

Ali Zaraay is an Egyptian visual artist and documentary photographer based in Cairo. He studied documentary photography and photojournalism in Germany before returning to Egypt, where he began his career working as a press photographer. Over time, his practice evolved away from daily reportage and toward long-term documentary work that allows for deeper engagement and slower storytelling.

Crawling on Dust. Instagram: @alizaraay

One of Ali’s most meaningful projects is Crawling on Dust, which he has been working on since 2015 with his friend Haj Hani and nomadic Bedouin communities in Egypt’s Delta region. The title comes from an expression used by the Bedouins to describe their constant movement. For Ali, “crawling” is not simply about physical motion, but about resistance, fragility, awareness, and uncertainty. Built over years of trust, friendship, and return visits, the project speaks to lives shaped by movement, instability, and resilience over time.

Karim Amr

You have definitely seen his photographs of Egypt — pyramids, the Sphinx, the desert. They are silent, yet at the same time, you can almost feel the air moving, a slight wind passing through the frame.

This is Karim Amr, an Egyptian photographer whose work centres on architecture, landscapes, and historical sites across Egypt. His images capture familiar landmarks with a quiet, almost cinematic sensitivity, allowing space, light, and atmosphere to take the lead.

Instagram: @krimamr

Rather than documenting places as monuments, Karim approaches them as living environments shaped by time. His photography reflects a strong connection to heritage while offering contemporary perspectives that feel intimate and contemplative, inviting viewers to see well-known locations in a new way.

Najla Said

Najla Said’s work draws from personal experience and everyday observations, focusing on womanhood, relationships, and emotional memory. Her visual language is quiet and restrained — honest without being explicit — allowing vulnerability to surface without exaggeration. Through subtle gestures and carefully composed imagery, she creates narratives that feel deeply personal yet widely relatable.

Sister, Oh Sister. Source: najla-said.com

One of her key projects, Sister, Oh Sister, is a photographic series offering a first-person reflection on the experience of womanhood in Cairo. The work recontextualises elements of Egyptian vernacular culture to propose alternative representations of femininity. Each image questions inherited ideas of “acceptable” womanhood — ideas shaped and reinforced by subconscious, deeply rooted patriarchal norms.

Wafaa Samir

Wafaa Samir is a Cairo-based photographer and visual artist with a background in architecture. Her practice explores the relationship between physical space and inner emotional landscapes, paying close attention to how environments shape memory, perception, and feeling.

Inherited. Source: wafaasamir.com

In Inherited, Wafaa Samir explores the tradition of folk murals in Egypt, documenting painted walls as spaces of self-expression and cultural communication. Often created on homes and using fragile materials, these murals are slowly disappearing due to urban change. The project reflects on this endangered practice by tracing its roots in Egyptian heritage and giving visibility to the painters behind it.

Nothingness. Source: wafaasamir.com

In Nothingness, Wafaa turns her attention to emptiness as a state rather than an absence. The project explores stillness, silence, and voids within space, using minimal compositions to examine moments where meaning feels suspended. Rather than presenting nothingness as loss, the work frames it as a space for reflection, pause, and emotional projection.

by Alexandra Mansilla