The Last Efendi
Abdalsalam Alhaj (Sudan)
© Skander Khlif — “Where Dust And Water Dream Together”
Tasweer Project Award 2025
We are thrilled to announce the ten winners of the Tasweer Project Award 2025 grants: Abdalsalam Alhaj, Amar Abdallah Osman, Amera Elnaal, Cléa Rekhou, Lamees Saleh Sharaf Eldin, Mahmoud Khattab, Marwan Tahtah, Mustafa Al Shami, Rehab Eldalil, and Skander Khlif.
The jurors for this fifth year of Tasweer’s annual grant are Azu Nwagbogu (Curator and Founder, African Artists’ Foundation, AAF); Mohamed Somji (Director, Gulf Photo Plus, GPP); and Shk. Maryam Hassan Al-Thani (Consultant Curator at Qatar Museums).
About the Artist:
Abdalsalam Alhaj is a Sudanese visual artist and immersive media producer working across photography, film, and virtual reality. Through a critical engagement with memory, power, and identity, his work examines how conflict shapes both personal and collective experience.
Rooted in lived experience and archival excavation, Alhaj’s practice explores social transformation and cultural resilience, weaving embodied encounters into layered, immersive narratives that question how we remember, move, and reimagine ourselves across time and place.
Artist's Statement:
The idea for The Last Efendi project took shape after I discovered the diary of my late father. The diary reveals the daily life of my father, a Sudanese sailor, in African, Asian, and European cities and ports during a time when Sudan had a strong presence in global shipping routes.
The project also represents an attempt to understand my relationship with my father, the questions that remained unanswered after his passing, and to comprehend myself within a new reality shaped by war and displacement. The project is an interplay between the personal and the historical, between family memory and a national memory that is being erased. At its core, The Last Efendi is a reflection on what loss leaves behind—a nation that has lost its maritime structure, a generation that has lost its stability, and an individual trying to hold on to a memory that is fading.
© Abdalsalam Alhaj - "The Last Efendi"
© Abdalsalam Alhaj - "The Last Efendi"
© Abdalsalam Alhaj - "The Last Efendi"
“ "The Last Efendi" weaves individual and collective memory into meditation on survival. Born from his father's notebook discovered amidst displacement after Sudan's 2023 war, Alhaj's experimental approach spanning photography, film, sound, and virtual reality explores how personal history intersects with national trauma. The project's urgency is undeniable but Alhaj's approach is sublime and poetic. The process is both iconoclastic and inventive whilst documenting the ongoing realities of exile. This is photography as archaeology of memory, where devalued fragments are revitalized through alchemical manipulation, reclaiming significance as catalysts for introspection. From decay emerges rebirth; from devastation, artistic resilience and continuity. The work demonstrates transformation's potential even within—perhaps especially within—conditions of profound loss. ”Azu Nwagbogu
Temporary Homes
Amar Abdallah Osman (Sudan)
About the Artist:
Amar Abdallah is a Sudanese documentary and conceptual photographer who focuses on documenting human life from a personal and community perspective. His work centers on capturing his family and community, with particular attention to issues of identity, displacement, and refuge.
Artist's Statement:
As a documentary and conceptual photographer, my work focuses on telling human stories and experiences through my images. I work on long-term photographic projects that document the life of my family, community, environment, and identity, highlighting the small everyday moments that reflect human resilience and adaptation. My approach combines realistic documentation with conceptual vision, and what motivates me is the ability to share these experiences in an honest and humane way that touches viewers and raises awareness about real-life stories
© Amar Abdallah Osman — “Temporary Homes”
© Amar Abdallah Osman — “Temporary Homes”
© Amar Abdallah Osman — “Temporary Homes”
“ Abdallah’s project Temporary Homes is a heartbreaking visual diary of his family’s harrowing journey of displacement in search of refuge, interwoven with first-hand accounts of the dangers they faced along the way. Through his writing and imagery, Abdallah captures not only the horrors of war but also the intimate emotional landscape of his and his family’s experiences. His photographs are beautifully poignant; and despite the circumstances in which they were made, they convey a quiet sense of hope and resilience as the family holds onto the dream of returning home. ”Mohamed Somji
The Salt Ate Away Her Eyes
Amera Elnaal (Libya)
About the Artist:
Amera Elnaal is a documentary photographer and journalist exploring themes of disability, memory, and identity. As the daughter of blind parents, she uses visual storytelling to amplify overlooked voices and challenge dominant narratives. Her practice blends photography, text, and audio, integrating traditional and experimental approaches. With a background in journalism, she merges storytelling with advocacy, highlighting systemic neglect and resilience. Her work has been supported by regional and international institutions and exhibited on various platforms. Through her lens, Amera documents personal and collective struggles, using photography as a tool for awareness, representation, and social change.
Artist's Statement:
Since childhood, storytelling has been my way of understanding and sharing the world. I would describe movies, my siblings, and even our clothes to my blind parents, painting vivid scenes for them. Their enthusiasm gave me a sense of purpose. Growing up in a small home with five children and two blind parents, I learned to observe life deeply. Through my photography, I explore the balance between beauty and injustice, capturing moments that reveal both. My work aims to open a window for others to witness life not only through my vision but also through unconventional perspectives.
© Amera Elnaal — “The Salt Ate Away Her Eyes”
© Amera Elnaal — “The Salt Ate Away Her Eyes”
© Amera Elnaal — “The Salt Ate Away Her Eyes”
“ The Salt Ate Away Her Eyes is an intimate and deeply moving series by Ameera Elnaal about her parents in Libya, both of whom are blind. Her personal narrations of her family’s lived experiences beautifully complement the tender imagery of her parents and home. While the challenges of living without sight are present throughout, what shines through is the family’s resilience, and the community and wider kinship network that surround them with care and support. Ameera’s series reminds us that even in darkness, there are glimmers of light. ”Mohamed Somji
Tabula Nomadica Digitalis
Cléa Rekhou (Algeria)
About the Artist:
Cléa Rekhou (b. 1988) is an Algerian visual storyteller based in Algiers. She began self-learning photography in 2016. Her projects address social and environmental issues from overlooked angles, as well as identity questions explored through her Algerian heritage. Inspired by artists like Taysir Batniji and Marina Feldhues, Cléa creates work that expresses her subjectivity. Through diverse means, she highlights people, their paths, and their stories.
Her work has been featured at international exhibitions including Vantage Point Sharjah and the 2024 Canex (Algeria). She is a member of Women Photograph, a Newf Fellow, and a National Geographic Explorer.
Artist's Statement:
Tabula Nomadica Digitalis will explore how pastoral mobility in Algeria has evolved, leveraging technology to navigate ecological and economic challenges. Traditional transhumance routes like Achaba and Azzaba are now fragmented, opportunistic, and increasingly mediated by trucks, phones, and agricultural tools. Inspired by the Tabula Rogeriana, I combine documentary photography with interactive cartography to map herders’ movements, layering portraits, landscapes, and field narratives. By visualizing these transformations, I investigate the intersection of tradition, change, and environmental pressures, while questioning how technology can both support resilience and disrupt our connection to the land: a story of people, land, and innovation in motion.
© Cléa Rekhou — “Tabula Nomadica Digitalis”
© Cléa Rekhou — “Tabula Nomadica Digitalis”
© Cléa Rekhou — “Tabula Nomadica Digitalis”
“ "Tabula Nomadica Digitalis" unveils the intricate tapestry between ancestral mobility and contemporary ecological pressures. Rekhou's multimedia interrogation—melding photography with interactive cartography—presents pastoral transformation as a vulnerable organism mutating within climate crisis and technological mediation. The project's approach is both methodologically rigorous and visually compelling, documenting transhumance routes across Algeria's Tell, Steppe, and Sahara with cartographic precision. Her integration of spatial data with documentary storytelling creates layered narratives that transcend conventional environmental photography. This is urgent documentation that questions how digital tools both enable herders' resilience and disrupt centuries-old connections to land. The work invites us to contemplate adaptation and survival within the cyclical nature of human-environment relationships. ”Azu Nwagbogu
Indefinitely
Lamees Saleh Sharaf Eldin (Egypt)
About the Artist:
Lamees Saleh Sharaf Eldin is a Cairo-based visual storyteller whose work explores themes of community, grief, the enduring human spirit in the face of change, and broader social issues in Egypt. She began her career amid the January 25th Revolution in 2011, using photography to express both the visible and invisible scars of social upheaval in her country. With a foundation in psychology and sociology, she approaches photography as a space for empathy, bearing witness, and social reflection.
Her images are carefully crafted, showing a deep sensitivity to personal artifacts, archival fragments, and the unseen bonds linking people and places.
Artist's Statement:
When a child is kidnapped in Egypt, the family is thrown into shock and forced to search alone, with no real support. After filing reports, they travel across governorates, spend their savings, and often fall prey to scammers. Another child could be abducted at any time amid numerous loopholes, leaving each new family to begin the same desperate search. Over time, these cases fade into millions of unresolved files. Lamees’s project is about the children whose lives were stolen, but also about the families who continue to search for them day after day, living in the agony of uncertainty.
© Lamees Saleh Sharaf Eldin — “Indefinitely”
© Lamees Saleh Sharaf Eldin — “Indefinitely”
© Lamees Saleh Sharaf Eldin — “Indefinitely”
“ I was drawn to Lamees’ project, Indefinitely which investigates the cases of missing children in Egypt. Her diligent and methodical approach and resulting vignettes of these tragic stories reveal the systemic failures and inequities within the justice system-particularly for those on the margins of society and with little or no means to seek redress. This is rigorous old-fashioned investigative documentary work at its best. Lamees’ accompanying imagery and archival clippings immerse you in the individual stories while shedding light on the complex factors that shape the pursuit of justice in these abductions. This award will enable Lamees to build meaningfully on her already outstanding work. ”Mohamed Somji
There Was a Valley Here Once
Mahmoud Khattab (Egypt)
About the Artist:
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 first self-published book, The Dog Sat Where We Parted, a winner of Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award, 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.
His works have been shown in Finland, Ethiopia, France, China and others. He is a fellow of Magnum Foundation.
Artist's Statement:
Chasing a nation’s dream of building new cities in Egypt’s desert, this project is a reminiscence of how our lands looked in a distant past. I remember a valley I grew up by that is slowly vanishing. It is becoming a flatbed to new cities. From its hidden layers, the valley gave me stone relics as a reminder of how fast epochs will change into a memory.
Through photographs and fossils sampled over years, I narrate a story of the disappearance of desert ecosystems, their flora and fauna, as they give way to the promises of a fast growing nation.
© Mahmoud Khattab — “There Was a Valley Here Once”
© Mahmoud Khattab — “There Was a Valley Here Once”
© Mahmoud Khattab — “There Was a Valley Here Once”
“ Mahmoud Khattab's There Was a Valley Here Once exemplifies the artistic and conceptual rigor celebrated in this year's Tasweer Award, merging research-driven environmental observation with poetic visual storytelling. Documenting Egypt's desert valleys surrendering to urban expansion, his photographs and terrain samples operate as both evidence and ballad, transforming landscapes into sites of memory and inquiry. Through fieldwork, Khattab compresses geological time into visceral present-day urgency, tracking ancient ecosystems erased beneath residential compounds. His sensitivity to terrain evokes profound emotion, capturing not merely what vanishes but interrogating why we must look. This stands as purposeful photography binding intellect, empathy, and visual excellence. ”Shk. Maryam Hassan Al-Thani
After the War
Marwan Tahtah (Lebanon)
About the Artist:
Marwan Tahtah is a Lebanese photographer with over 24 years in photojournalism across Lebanon and the Arab region. His work has been featured in international photo agencies and publications, spanning Lebanon, the Arab world, Europe, and the US. Covering daily news has gradually awakened a need to shift his focus towards deeper narratives, documenting social issues beyond wire assignments. In the past five years, amidst Lebanon’s ongoing crisis, his work has increasingly aimed to capture the harsh realities of life in the country.
Artist's Statement:
After the war on Lebanon, the pain of the people of the city and the village is revealed. War, with its tragedies, affects us all. The destruction extends to the undamaged neighborhoods, reflecting the faces of the people who have lost loved ones or friends, a home, a neighborhood, or perhaps a feeling that no longer exists somewhere. People search for memories that might take them back to a better past. This isn’t the first war I’ve photographed in Lebanon, but I hope it’s the last.
© Marwan Tahtah — “After the War”
© Marwan Tahtah — “After the War”
© Marwan Tahtah — “After the War”
“ Tahtah's documentation of Lebanon's 2024 war aftermath focuses on the ceasefire period—when communal pain becomes visible, when families search for memories amid rubble. His cinematic black-and-white aesthetic serves as visual dialogue between destruction and endurance, between what surfaces and what remains unspoken. The approach is mature and unflinching, yet maintains dignity in its portrayal of suffering. Covering Beirut, the South, and Bekaa Valley, the work captures how war "continues in other ways"—through displacement, suspended reconstruction, and the faces of those navigating loss. This is essential historical documentation that invites contemplation of peace's vulnerability and trauma's persistence beyond ceasefire. The photographs remind us that endings are rarely clean, that aftermath extends indefinitely into daily life. ”Azu Nwagbogu
Alzheimer's and family
Mustafa Al Shami (Iraq)
About the Artist:
Mustafa Al Shami is an Iraqi photographer who has been practicing photography for over ten years. During this time, he has documented religious rituals and practices in Iraq, as well as archaeological sites and locations, in an effort to preserve the visual memory of both place and people.
His projects focus on documentary photography that explores themes of memory, family, and identity through visual storytelling. For the past two years, he has been working on a long-term project about his grandfather, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, exploring the relationship between individual memory, family history, and social transformation.
He participated in the “Narrative” exhibition as part of Cairo Photo Week and received a grant from the festival to further develop his project. Through his work, he seeks to build bridges between personal experience and collective memory.
Artist's Statement:
My photographic work is rooted in visual storytelling that connects memory with personal, religious, and urban identity. For the past two years, I have been working on a long-term project about my grandfather, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, exploring the impact of loss and trauma on memory and how the present is reshaped by the past.
My approach relies on extended documentary photography, incorporating collage, writing on photographs, and embroidery to add new visual and narrative layers. My grandfather and grandmother actively participate in shaping the artwork—whether through their presence in the photographs or their intimate contributions of embroidery, commentary, and writing—transforming the work into a shared space that links individual experience with collective memory and identity.
© Mustafa Al Shami — “Alzheimer's and family”
© Mustafa Al Shami — “Alzheimer's and family”
© Mustafa Al Shami — “Alzheimer's and family”
“ Transforming intimate loss into profound meditation on memory's fragility within domestic life, Al Shami's Alzheimer's and Family captures how Alzheimer's reshapes familial relationships, and the spaces families inhabit together. The work demonstrates the complexities of being human along with practicing visual restraint, navigating the delicate terrain between privacy and testimony. This award enables Al Shami to continue his investigation through mentorship, additional production, and exhibition development. His approach exemplifies photography as both art and empathy, where deeply personal experience becomes a mirror for collective understanding of illness, care, and the quiet erosions that redefine family bonds across generations. ”Shk. Maryam Hassan Al-Thani
From the Ashes, I Rose
Rehab Eldalil (Egypt)
About the Artist:
Rehab Eldalil is a documentary photographer and educator whose work explores identity through participatory creative practices. Focusing on human interest-stories and environmental issues in the SWANA region, spanning personal projects, NGO collaborations, and publications. She holds a photography BA and MA and works to develop layered and comprehensive visual narratives that challenge the exoticism of communities including her own perspective as an African and Arabic woman. Eldalil has published two photo books and contributed to others. She has received multiple awards, including World Press Photo 2022 and Foam Talents 2024, and is a Catchlight Global Fellow with numerous international exhibitions.
Portrait: © Rehab Eldalil by Christopher Michel 2025
Artist's Statement:
From the Ashes, I Rose confronts the harsh realities of human rights violations and the devastating effects of warfare on civilians in the SWANA region. Depicting the stories of wounded patients who are in the process of recovery. Working collaboratively with the patients to reinterpret their experiences as profound acts of resistance. Shifting the narrative to celebrate the protagonists' journeys of rebirth and transformation. Their trauma is metaphorically transformed into superpowers, highlighting their extraordinary post-trauma growth. This project aims to challenge prevailing victimhood narratives by emphasizing the agency and creativity of those affected by violence and fostering dialogue and connection.
© Rehab Eldalil — “From the Ashes, I Rose”
© Rehab Eldalil — “From the Ashes, I Rose”
© Rehab Eldalil — “From the Ashes, I Rose”
“ An established photographer and educator whose work has earned her recognition, Eldalil receives this award as an exemplar of the photographic practice Tasweer champions. From the Ashes, I Rose positions war survivors from across the SWANA region as co-creators, merging her vision with patient-made interventions through craft, drawing, and text. The work transforms trauma into testimony of post-trauma growth, celebrating resilience without erasing pain. This award supports developing a collaborative guide with patients and mental health counsellors, continuing production with Palestinian, Sudanese, and Yemeni communities, and fostering international dialogue through exhibitions. Recognition for unwavering commitment to ethical storytelling, visual sophistication, and work honouring agency, dignity, and collective healing. ”Shk. Maryam Hassan Al-Thani
Where Dust And Water Dream Together
Skander Khlif (Tunisia)
About the Artist:
Skander Khlif (b. 1983, Tunis) is a Tunisian photographer whose work traces the subtle relationships between people, landscape, and memory across Mediterranean and North African environments. Blending poetic nuance with documentary clarity, his practice is shaped by an interest in geometric rhythms, fractal forms, and the patterns that echo between human and natural worlds. He develops long-term projects on cultural identity, urban life, and environmental resilience. His work has been exhibited internationally and published across major media outlets. He is the recipient of the Photomed Award and the 2025 LensCulture Humanity Award.
Artist's Statement:
Skander Khlif’s long-term project Where Dust and Water Dream Together explores the delicate ties between communities and the land they inhabit. Working across Tunisia’s deserts, coasts, mountains, and oases, he focuses on how landscapes and daily life reflect quiet forms of continuity and resilience. His visual approach combines documentary clarity with a poetic sensibility, often guided by recurring patterns, natural rhythms, and geometric forms. He photographs digitally, using both medium-format and full-frame cameras to create portraits and landscapes that speak to one another. His work is driven by a desire to record the fragile bonds that shape belonging, identity, and cultural memory.
© Skander Khlif — “Where Dust And Water Dream Together”
© Skander Khlif — “Where Dust And Water Dream Together”
© Skander Khlif — “Where Dust And Water Dream Together”
“ Exceptional depth and visual sophistication distinguish Where Dust and Water Dream Together, a three-year inquiry into Tunisia's convergent landscapes where desert meets sea and dust shares breath with water. His photographs resist dramatizing crisis, instead revealing how culture and memory sustain communities through environmental transformation. Dust and water emerge as opposing yet intertwined forces shaping daily existence. The award supports the project's culmination through curatorial guidance, sequencing, and photobook development. This recognition provides Khlif both platform and resources to elevate a realized body of work into essential testimony of environmental endurance and human belonging. ”Shk. Maryam Hassan Al-Thani