Mahmoud Khattab is an independent photographer and writer based between Cairo, Paris and Bern. Mahmoud’s work spans years of observing change and reminiscence of hills and himself in stills and writings.
In his first self-published book, Mahmoud narrates a year as a soldier: venturing into the desert with a dog and an individuality stripped. Finding salvation in the poetry and visual; an autoethnography. The Dog Sat Where We Parted is the winner of Kraszna-Krausz 2025 Photography Book Award and was shortlisted for Paris Photo-Aperture First Photobook Award.
In pursuit of tracings, Mahmoud has focused on working on and with valleys, both alive and disappearing. There Was a Valley Here Once traces the disappearing valleys in Cairo’s eastern deserts: a story of chasing a nation’s dream of building new cities in Egypt and how it changed the topographies and nearby ecosystems. It received recognition of Projects Award by Qatar Museums and will debut at the 15th Bamako Biennale in November, 2026.
Mahmoud narrates a Cairo’s past we haven’t seen through stories of love that transcended centuries. In A Poet Never Born, a story that intimately narrates two characters who lived 600 years apart, he writes poetry to imagine sceneries of Omar Ibnul Farid and Jamila Fazail meeting over, and over.
His works have been shown in festivals as Rencontres de la Photographe Arles and in Countries such as Finland, Ethiopia, China and others. He is a fellow of Magnum Foundation and a
member of Everyday Africa and Everyday Middle East. Mahmoud studied medicine at Ain Shams University in Cairo and is currently pursuing masters studies of contemporary art practice at the Academy of the Arts in Bern.
Contact: mahmoudm.khattab (at) gmail (dot) com
Artist Statement