The Dog Sat Where We Parted Self-published, 2024

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A laureate of Polycopies & Co. and Shortlisted in Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award, The Dog Sat Where We Parted is a photography book: a visual narrative of my time in conscription as I ventured into the desert as a soldier with a dog, a head shaved and a camouflage that appealed to sand. Questioning times of following orders and sharing a plate and a story with strangers who dressed and shaved their heads just like me. Through photographs discretely taken together with journal writings, I echoed my solitude as I pay my debt to a country with servitude of my body and time.

First edition: 700
ISBN: 978-3-033-10910-0
Photographs, text, illustration and graphic design © Mahmoud Khattab 2024
Print: Institut français d’archéologie orientale du Caire, Printing House - Cairo
Hard cover, A5, 112 pages
Paper: Cotton 120g
Textile Cover: Linen sourced from local market with hard letter-press
Price: 60 Euro/CHF


News: In its 40th edition, Mahmoud Khattab wins the 2025 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award for The Dog Sat Where We Parted (Self-published). A deeply personal project, Khattab captures the vulnerability and fragility of otherwise unseen military life in Egypt. Shot during his year of Egyptian national service as an army doctor in 2017, it is named after Antar, a stray dog with whom Khattab formed a close bond over five-mile walks across the desert. The photographs are an expression of Khattab’s feelings of intense loneliness as a soldier.