Tasweer Project Award 2026

We are thrilled to announce the ten winners of the Tasweer Project Award 2026 grants: Amat Al-Rahman Alafory, Ebrahim Alipoor, Fatema Al-Mohalal Al-Doh, Haitham Nsais, Issam Chorrib, Laura Menassa, Mohammad Kotb, Sadiq Al-Harasi, Shahad Alqassmi, and Wadah Omer.

The jurors for this sixth year of Tasweer’s annual grant were Dr. Issam Nassar (Professor of History and Head of Program at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies); Linda Al Khoury (Photographer, Curator, and Founder of Darat Al Tasweer and Image Festival – Amman); and Raneen Bukhari (Curator and Advocate for the Arts).

Tasweer Award 2026 Jurors

A Nation in a Room

Amat Al-Rahman Alafory (Yemeni)

Amat Al-Rahman Alafory Portrait — **About the Artist:**
Amat Al-Rahman Alafory is a freelance photographer and a graduate in Media Studies. Through her lens, she is dedicated to documenting reality, conveying beauty, and inspiring change. Her passion is reflected in her field photography, which tells human stories that have yet to be told. She launched the "Photo Bank" initiative, offering free photography sessions to children and people in public spaces in an effort to spread joy and preserve beautiful memories despite difficult circumstances. The initiative received widespread engagement from many Yemeni photographers. She also founded the "Tourist Experience" project to document archaeological sites and highlight the rich cultural heritage of her homeland, driven by her belief that photography is a historical document capable of creating real change and preserving national identity from fading into oblivion.
*Portrait: Courtesy of the artist.*

Amat Al-Rahman Alafory_The Nostalgia of Songs — **Project Statement:**
Amat Al-Rahman Alafory's photographic practice stems from a deep belief that the camera is not merely a tool for documenting reality, but a means of reclaiming identity and creating hope. Her artistic approach focuses on environmental portraiture and documenting the subtle details that connect people to their places and histories, following a method that blends the precision of journalism with the emotion of visual storytelling.
She draws inspiration from the forgotten stories hidden within the corners of Yemeni cities, searching for the beauty that exists amid adversity, a vision reflected in her initiatives such as "Photo Bank" and "Tourist Experience." What motivates her as an artist is a profound sense of responsibility toward the national memory. She strives to capture those fleeting moments that risk being lost, transforming the photograph into a living document that gives a voice to the voiceless and preserves for history the features of a homeland that refuses to be forgotten.

Amat Al-Rahman Alafory_Two Faces of One Memory — © Amat Al-Rahman Alafory - "A Nation in a Room"

Amat Al-Rahman Alafory_Voices That Never Die — © Amat Al-Rahman Alafory - "A Nation in a Room"

Amat Al-Rahman Alafory_Faces of Dawn — © Amat Al-Rahman Alafory - "A Nation in a Room"

“ AlAfory has presented a project that could be of immense cultural significance to the history of Yemen. She has taken on a big responsibility to support, promote and preserve an archive of Yemen left to the ages. In times such as this, the significance of such an archive and importance of such an undertaking cannot be diminished. AlAfory's documentation style archives the archive, pushing her goal and subsequent need to make sure such a collection survives the test of time. Her attention and dedication, in this series and in her practice, to memory, to narrative, to truth is resolute in the images she shares with the world. Her journalistic prowess displayed beautifully through A Nation in a Room. ”
Raneen Bukhari

In Quest of Stage Seven

Ebrahim Alipoor (Iranian / Based in Iraq)

Ebrahim Alipoor Portrait by Majid Zahedi — **About the Artist:**
Ebrahim Alipoor is a Kurdish documentary photographer. His work focuses on borders, migration, labor, identity, and marginalized communities across the Middle East through long-term storytelling. He is best known for Bullets Have No Borders, a decade-long project documenting Kurdish Kolbars working along the Iran-Iraq border under dangerous conditions. His photographs have been published internationally in Stern, Le Monde, and Newsweek Japan. Alipoor has received recognition from the World Press Photo, POY Asia, the Allard Prize, and the VII Foundation Mentor Program. Through photography and visual storytelling, he explores the human consequences of political borders, displacement, and social inequality.
*Portrait: Courtesy of the artist by Majid Zahedi.*

Ebrahim Alipoor_In Quest of Stage Seven — **Project Statement:**
In Quest of Stage Seven follows Kurdish dervishes as they journey through the mountains and villages of Kurdistan, performing Sama, the Sufi ritual of devotion and spiritual transcendence. Through scenes of prayer, music, movement, and gathering, the project explores faith, healing, and collective memory within Kurdish communities. Set against the landscapes of Kurdistan, the photographs reflect the connection between spirituality, tradition, and everyday life, forming a visual narrative about devotion, cultural continuity, and the enduring bond between the dervishes and the communities that welcome them.

“ This project, is an outstanding pure, very well done documentary photography work, with a very bold visually captures showing moments that can be only attended and not seen, the closeness the photographer shows in his images, makes the viewer live the moment, the very interesting angles shows the great ability of the photographer as well as his great presence in the right moments. The quality of the images is very good, the choice of Black and White photography worked very well with this project, that can easily direct the viewer to the point of focus of each image. This amazing work has a great potential to be published as a book. ”
Linda Al Khoury

Swahili Arabs

Fatema Al-Mohalal Al-Doh (Qatar)

Fatema Al-Mohalal Al-Doh Portrait — **About the Artist:**
Fatema bint Ahmad is a Qatari independent documentary photographer and a passionate traveller. Exploring unique and untold stories, she has been to 55 countries across different continents. She is interested in humanitarian stories, vanishing cultures, nomadic societies, remote tribes, minorities and indigenous people. The majority of her work is series-based images that tell a story and create a feeling. Her work focuses on portraiture, negative space and details. She mainly works with color, natural light, and the human element. Fatema conducts ethnographic expeditions, immersing herself in particular communities, living among their members, and experiencing their daily lives.
*Portrait: Courtesy of the artist. From the artist’s fieldwork in Siberia.*

Fatema Al-Mohalal Al-Doh_Swahili Arabs — **Project Statement:**
Fatema bint Ahmad strives to tell unique stories and create images that are informative, impactful, and aesthetically pleasing. Different cultures motivate her, while travel and nature inspire her. Her approach is ethnographic; she travels and lives with the people she studies and documents.

“ AlMohalal captures the deep roots of Arabs in East Africa. A visually alluring storyline pulling us through her adventure in the different spaces that these communities occupy and thrive in. We see how they hold onto their traditions and ancestral beliefs while also being an integral part of their country's history and heritage. Her anthropological documentation of the "Swahili Arabs" is a dive into a colorful bright world, making her own connections with the culture and bringing us along with her. ”
Raneen Bukhari

Fallen Seagulls

Haitham Nsais (Morocco)

Haitham Nsais Portrait — **About the Artist:**
Haitham Nsais (born in 1998, Larache, Morocco) is a photographer whose practice primarily focuses on street photography. He began his photographic journey in 2018, concentrating on documenting everyday life, traditions, and the rhythm of his city, with a particular interest in the small details that reflect the identity of a place. His work centers on public spaces, exploring the relationship between people and place, as well as the human connections that emerge within them. Although street photography forms the core of his practice, he adapts his approach according to the nature of each project and its visual and human context. For Haitham, photography is a means of self-expression, preserving collective memory, and raising questions about urban transformation. He has participated in several exhibitions in Morocco and abroad and is currently developing new photographic projects.
*Portrait: Courtesy of the artist.*

Haitham Nsais_Fallen Seagulls — **Project Statement:**
Haitham Nsais uses photography as a means of documenting everyday life, with a particular focus on the relationship between people and place. He approaches the image as a form of visual storytelling that raises questions about memory, labor, and belonging, rather than simply documenting a single moment.
His approach is based on quiet observation and building a relationship of trust with both people and place before photographing, with close attention to the small details and empty spaces that reveal the depth of reality. He focuses on subjects such as urban life, industrial spaces, everyday work, and the slow or sudden transformations that affect different environments.
His practice stems from living within these spaces and engaging with them directly, giving his work a personal and human dimension. He sees photography as a means of preserving memory and reinterpreting reality through a visual language that is quiet yet rich in meaning.

“ This long-term photography project represents a complete artistic documentary work, it clearly shows the photographer’s connection to the place, through his work, the photographer takes us on a tour inside the hidden spaces of the factory, showing the daily moments of the workers, with many details, this kind of work can be presented, when the photographer is not only a visitor but someone that belongs to the place, and that can show clearly in this documentary work. The composition of the scenes, the angles, and the choice of black and white photography, strength the project and help to focus on the important details of each scene. Through this project, the photographer successfully conveys his message from a human perspective, reflecting the reality of the situation and the transformation that has taken place in this factory. ”
Linda Al Khoury

A Pair Of Gloves

Issam Chorrib (Morocco)

Issam Chorrib Portrait — **About the Artist:**
Issam Chorrib is a documentary photographer from Casablanca whose work is distinguished by his choice of subjects documenting Moroccan society through black-and-white photography, using monochrome as a way of portraying everyone as equal, free from the distinctions of color. In 2026, he was awarded Third Place in the second edition of the CDG Foundation Award for Young Moroccan Photography for his documentary series Echo of the High Arenas (L'Écho des Arènes Hautes). His work combines a journalistic perspective with cinematic aesthetics. His practice focuses on themes of collective memory, urban transformation, and the resilience of marginalized communities. Through long-term projects such as A Pair of Gloves, he explores the intersection of sports culture and social identity, employing black-and-white visual narratives.
*Portrait: Courtesy of the artist.*

Issam Chorrib_A Pair Of Gloves — **Project Statement:**
Issam Chorrib's artistic practice centers on documenting moments of silent struggle within Moroccan society and stories of resilience that often remain unseen, whether among athletes or family members. In his project A Pair of Gloves, he adopts a cinematic black-and-white approach to highlight the intersection of identity, memory, and sports culture.
His work extends beyond what happens inside the boxing ring to document family bonds as the primary driving force behind this resilience. Through this approach, he seeks to transform these intimate local stories into a lasting visual archive.
What motivates him is documenting the mental isolation and quiet dedication experienced by male and female boxers in the neighborhoods of Sidi Moumen and Lahraouyine, offering an alternative perspective on the meaning of athletic strength in Morocco.

“ Chorrib has proven his aptitude for the raw in his practice. The honest visual with no softness or except what appears in reality. Uncensored, unfiltered, emotion and openness is seen with each image. He takes you in and leaves you feeling like an audience to the spectacle being documented. A Pair of Gloves, Chorrib's project, is a deep dive into a corner of the world seen by few but loved by many. A whole community, a family, fostered to showcase, encourage, and revel in a sport made for the resilient and disciplined. You can see the trust he has gained from enduring through a long term project, collecting their stories, turning them legend, a foundation for much more to come. ”
Raneen Bukhari

(G)oldies

Laura Menassa (Lebanon)

Laura Menassa Portrait by Abdallah Sabry — **About the Artist:**
Laura Menassa is a Beirut-based photographer.
She uses her camera to understand people, to deconstruct and navigate the world through her emotions. Between the intimate and the political, she weaves together documentation, writing, and photography to explore themes of memory, intimacy, and belonging.
Her work unfolds like a personal diary, a reflection on her surroundings, her city, and herself. Rooted in everyday life and Lebanon’s social and political realities, her practice traces experiences and routines through moments of revolution, crisis, and war, while addressing broader subjects such as women’s rights, taboos, the unseen, and the unspoken.
*Portrait: Courtesy of the artist by Abdallah-Sabry.*

Laura Menassa_(G)oldies — **Project Statement:**
(G)oldies focuses on the Mar Mitr neighbourhood and the women Laura Menassa has known since childhood. Through intimate portraits and everyday moments, she explores their presence as witnesses to decades of war, change, and survival, while also questioning how the place of women in society has evolved over the past thirty years, and how their roles and lives have been shaped by continuous instability, something she is also experiencing today.
Her approach is rooted in quiet observation, proximity, and familiarity, motivated by the urgency to document and build an archive of these women and their neighbourhood before they slowly disappear.

“ This documentary project takes us to another intimate perspective that photographers share through their projects, it reflects the relation the photographer built with their neighborhood and childhood memories, what benefit the photographer the ability to break the borders of privacy, and inter the houses of the women selected to be documented in this project, this took us inside the homes and the intimate spaces showing moments from the surrounding. This project has a great potential to develop into a very powerful work, through improving the technical aspect of the visuals, and to make use of a better light moments, to enhance the visuals. ”
Linda Al Khoury

Red Brick Dreams

Mohammad Kotb (Egypt)

Mohammad Kotb_Portrait — **About the Artist:**
Mohammad Kotb is an Egyptian photographer from Alexandria whose work focuses on long-term documentary projects exploring social narratives, environmental transformation, and anthropological questions. He approaches photography as a tool to understand the human condition with honesty and sensitivity. Kotb studied Mass Communication at Beirut Arab University and documentary photography through VII Academy and the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Initiative (DMJX). His work has received support from AFAC, Magnum Foundation, and the Prince Claus Fund. He is the recipient of several awards, including the CatchLight Visual Storytelling Award, and has exhibited his work in regional and international festivals and exhibitions.
*Portrait: Courtesy of the artist.*

Mohammad Kotb_Red Brick Dreams — **Project Statement:**
Mohammad Kotb's photographic practice focuses on long-term documentary storytelling that explores labor, memory, social inequality, and the fragile relationship between people and their environments. Through intimate engagement with the communities he photographs, he seeks to document hidden realities shaped by poverty, displacement, and inherited social conditions in Egypt.
In Red Brick Dreams, he follows young girls working in brick factories after leaving school, tracing the emotional and physical weight of survival and sacrifice. His approach combines documentary realism with personal observation, motivated by a desire to preserve overlooked human stories with honesty, empathy, and visual depth.

“ Red Brick Dreams is a compelling example of long-form documentary photography that transcends conventional photojournalism through sustained engagement with its subjects. It recalls Susan Meiselas not in visual style but in its documentary philosophy of long-term immersion, collaborative storytelling, ethical engagement, and the integration of multiple forms of testimony. Mohammad Kotb builds a relationship of trust with one family, allowing their voices, writings, drawings, and daily lives to shape the narrative. Refusing to reduce child labor to spectacle, the project offers a nuanced portrayal of poverty, resilience, education, and hope through intimate sequencing and multimedia storytelling. ”
Dr. Issam Nassar

What Do Fathers Leave Behind?

Sadiq Al-Harasi (Yemen)

Sadiq Al-Harasi Portrait — **About the Artist:**
Sadiq Al-Harasi is a Yemeni photographer and cultural practitioner. He holds a BSc. in Architectural Engineering from Sana'a University.
Driven by a desire to explore hidden truths and challenge societal narratives, Sadiq creates thought-provoking and autobiographical work that delves into themes such as memory, identity, death, loss, and belonging. He is particularly captivated by the expressive power of the human form, using it to explore the intricate connections between culture, identity, and the interactions between individuals and their surroundings.
His work has been exhibited locally and internationally, including Slidefest SAFAR-Peckham 24, Image Festival Amman 2025, LagosPhotoBiennale 25, and VAiF25.
*Portrait: Courtesy of the artist.*

Sadiq Al-Harasi_What Do Fathers Leave Behind? — **Project Statement:**
As a Yemeni living in a war-torn country, Sadiq Al-Harasi's artistic journey is shaped by absence, resilience, and self-discovery. These experiences inform his exploration of memory, loss, identity, and belonging.
As a self-taught artist in a culture where art is undervalued, he is driven by storytelling and cultural preservation. Scarcity and restrictions define his practice and highlight the need for spaces where Yemeni voices engage globally.
His projects create alternative narratives linking personal emotions to broader social structures. Through mixed media, he builds an auto-ethnographic archive that connects individual and collective experiences, resisting erasure and generating new vocabularies of memory and belonging.

“ What Do Fathers Leave Behind? is a deeply accomplished autobiographical documentary project that transforms personal loss into a universal meditation on memory, identity, and inheritance. Sadiq Al-Harasi combines photography, family archives, writing, and oral testimony to construct a layered narrative that is both intellectually ambitious and emotionally restrained. Rather than documenting his father directly, he explores the traces absence leaves behind, inviting viewers to reflect on remembrance and belonging. The project’s thoughtful sequencing and sophisticated use of archival materials create a cohesive visual essay that is intimate yet widely resonant, making it one of the strongest conceptual works in the collection. ”
Dr. Issam Nassar

Echoes of Time

Shahad Alqassmi (Qatar)

Shahad Alqassmi Portrait — **About the Artist:**
Shahad Alqassmi is a student at the College of Fine Arts at Qatar University. She is interested in photography as a means of visual expression and of highlighting details that are often overlooked. Her artistic approach focuses on forgotten objects, revealing their beauty in a way that carries a contemplative and human quality.
She draws inspiration from old places, elements that were once part of everyday life, and even routine daily details. Through her work, she seeks to document the traces of time and memory found in abandoned and simple objects. In her photography, she relies on composition and light to emphasize emotion and the silence embedded within a scene, transforming ordinary details into images that carry aesthetic value and visual meaning, reflecting her contemporary artistic vision.
*Portrait: Courtesy of the artist.*

Shahad Alqassmi_Echoes of Time — **Project Statement:**
Shahad Alqassmi's photographic practice focuses on documenting forgotten details, abandoned places, and elements that were once part of everyday life, with an emphasis on revealing the beauty found in the traces of time, decay, and emptiness. She follows a contemplative and quiet visual approach, using light and composition to express the emotions and memories associated with the place or object being photographed.
Her work is inspired by the idea that every abandoned trace holds a story and an echo that remain present despite the absence of those who once belonged to it. This drives her to search for the simple details that people often overlook. What motivates her artistically is her ability to transform everyday and forgotten objects into images that carry a human presence, giving viewers the opportunity to reflect and connect the photograph with their own memories and personal experiences.

“ This documentary “Echoes of Time” photography project, beautifully presents silent moments of abandoned spaces around us, where the eye of the photographer can see beauty out of lonely abandoned moments, that can give the viewer the sense of imagining the history of the space . The captures are well done, the photographer has a very good perspective captures, with interesting angles, and a very good light catches. This project can be a long-term ongoing project, with a great potential to be published as a book, in addition, this project can evolve to an awareness message of the importance of reconsidering the use of abandoned space. ”
Linda Al Khoury

Weaving the Earth

Wadah Omer (Sudanese / Based in Uganda)

Wadah Omer Portrait — **About the Artist:**
Wadah Omer is a Sudanese photojournalist and documentary photographer based in Kampala, Uganda. His work focuses on displacement, resilience, and daily life in refugee communities, exploring themes of identity, belonging, and agricultural knowledge as a cultural heritage. He developed his professional practice through self-study and independent projects, in addition to two years working as a photographer for the Sudanese newspaper Al-Hadatha. He has also collaborated with several local and international organizations. His ongoing project, "Weaving the Earth," documents the lives of Sudanese refugees in Uganda as they rebuild their lives through agriculture, highlighting the relationship between earth, survival, and memory.\
*Portrait: Courtesy of the artist.*

Wadah Omer_Weaving the Earth — **Project Statement:**
Wadah Omer's work is based on documentary photography and long-term visual storytelling, with a particular focus on documenting the lives of Sudanese refugees in Uganda and how they are rebuilding their lives by working the land after being forcibly displaced by war. He approaches photography as a tool for witnessing and preserving, a means of creating a visual archive that preserves stories and experiences often left out of official records.
His approach relies on quiet observation and long-term work, returning to the same places and people over time to follow the slow transformations in their lives.
His themes focus on earth, memory, work, and belonging. What motivates his artistic journey is his own experience as a refugee, which has given him a profound understanding of loss and rebuilding.

“ This documentary photography project shows a different side of the lives of refugees, far from the usual images that shows the suffering. The work captures the daly life of the Sudanese refugees in Uganda, while trying to cope with their current situation, we see smiling faces, daily moments, and we feel a sense of stability and connection to the place. This project has a very good potential of improving to become a long-term documentary that can tell the story of these people, with a non clear future. The visuals are good, and can be improved technically into a great work. ”
Linda Al Khoury