Mahmoud Khattab is an independent photographer and writer based in Cairo. Mahmoud’s work spans years of observing change and reminiscence of hills and himself in stills and writings.
In his story, The Dog Sat Where We Parted, which was shown in Arles: Les Rencontres de la Photographie, and was recently a winner of Polycopies & Co festival, 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.
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 Finland, Ethiopia, France, Tunisia, China and others. He is a
member of Everyday Africa, Everyday Middle East and recently became a fellow of Magnum
Foundation to continue his work of tracing disappearing valleys in eastern deserts of Cairo. Mahmoud studied medicine at Ain Shams University in Cairo.
Artist Statement