Online Conversation with Shaima Ayoub and Marwa Abou Leila

Shaima Ayoub: An inspirational woman and an absolute force, Marwa Abu Leila is the co-founder and managing partner of Photopia, an independent photography school in Cairo.

After quitting her banking career in 2011, she co-founded Photopia with her friend in May 2012 to offer both emerging and established photographers an ongoing platform to learn, meet, interact and have the opportunity to connect with role models in the industry. In late 2016, she launched Photobook Egypt, a powerful series of photography books, each dedicated to a theme or a project photographed and narrated by both Egyptian and regional photographers and curated and published by Photopia Cairo. She's also the founder and curator of Cairo Photo Week, a photo festival that brings the most influential image makers in Egypt and the region together for a wide array of educational talks, workshops, portfolio reviews and exhibitions in the heart of Cairo.

Marwa, hello, good evening, how are you?

Marwa Abou Leila: Hi, Shaima. Thank you so much for this amazing introduction and, of course, for choosing us to be hosted at your very promising festival.

SA: No, thank you! Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. I think it's very interesting that we're ending the week with another festival, even though it wasn't planned that way, it was just a matter of availability.

Alongside these online talks that we've had this past week, we've had live roundtable sessions with the photography community here in Doha for three days and a lot of really interesting talking points were brought up and discussed, and one thing that really stuck with me, probably because it's something that I think about a lot and discuss with my friends who are image makers and filmmakers, is space and for or me, a physical space is important and I can't help but think about what you've managed to create with Photopia. You know, this hub, a haven for photographers, and I mentioned at the start that you co-founded it in 2012 after quitting your job in banking. So if we're talking Egypt 2012, we're talking post-revolution, so why was it necessary for you to start Photopia in 2012? What was happening? Can you talk to us about what was going on, obviously post-revolution, and the need for Photopia to launch in 2012?

MAL: It was a massive change and I think it hit most of the Egyptians either on the national level, like the public level, and probably also on the personal level because having things change drastically like this in only 18 days made us all feel like anything else is possible to happen. So it was a milestone for many people to actually start considering changing their own personal arena, where they can either quit their jobs or start, and as well, it was the first spark of this currently very powerful creative industry in Egypt. Because again, political freedom and such a promising change for a better future for the young people makes everyone inspired and looking forward to…and bring out the best in them. So it was the real restart of the new era in photography, to be more specific. It was for the whole creative industry, but specifically photography because it was the time also that the digital camera became more affordable for people to own. With the massive change and many events that were happening on the streets, so many people went down to shoot and to cover all such political and street events, whether it was unrest or promising or elections. So it was really important on the documentation side and after that we shifted when things became more stable. We shifted towards more on the art practice of photography rather than, you know, journalism or like documenting the street or documenting what's happening on the political side. So it opened so many doors for us. So why in 2012? It was the revolution that made me quit and it's as straightforward as this that made me quit and consider pursuing my dream of having a photography school, slash hub, in Cairo where it was much needed.

SA: I want to ask you about setting up Photopia and the challenges you faced, but before we get into that, I want to know, what is your relationship with photography? Why was it your dream to have a hub?

MAL: My relation with photography is more about the documentation part. I have always been the one who used to take photographs among my friends and to go to print and reprint copies and I think it was more embedded in my system that I like to document history, document moments and then I took a professional course for photography and then I pursued my banking career with like a hidden passion in photography.

I've always been a serious enthusiast and a serious, maybe, collector…I can't say a collector, more like an observer, because photography back then was never available for sale as a piece of art but I was always a very passionate follower and then it was just probably in my system. Then I was inspired by the amazing Photographer's Gallery in London when I visited and once I saw it I thought, this is exactly what I want to do in Cairo, maybe with extra workshops on the side. Then I started planning it with my colleague who was also a very passionate photographer, he was an amateur like me, and we decided to only be the entrepreneurs and the art, or slash, cultural managers rather than…we would never be able to teach photography of course, so we decided that we have to give room for the pros in each field. So Photopia became a very neutral zone and a zone for everyone to either teach or learn or connect with no specific direction or school. We just hosted anyone who could have something to offer to the community. Of course, it's planned and it's well curated but it was all about hosting the best in each field.

SA: What was setting Photopia up like? What sort of challenges did you face?

MAL: Of course the financial one. It was the number one challenge because the business model was not something that you could follow or recreate, like a restaurant or something. So we had to come up with ideas and solutions that fit our community back then, 10 years ago - 11 years ago. Photography has always been, back in the 20s Cairo and Egypt was the hub for photography just like the cinema, and it was the golden era but then it all fell apart a bit. So I can confidently tell you that post revolution it was the new era of photography in Egypt when it comes to pros in the field, people who would teach.

So we decided that we would start to count on just local photographers and make them teach rising and serious young learners. The challenge was definitely the financial part because I needed to make it clear and solid that we mainly teach, as opposed to having like a cafe to spend on, to be our source of revenue just to sustain. So over time I overcame those challenges by finding a constant revenue stream, like the studio rental for instance, because we don't count on funds much and in return we give two kinds of workshops, either paid or free workshops, supported by us. So this sort of model saved us and when we started to have a very solid program…and consistency, consistency actually attracts sponsors because sponsors want to have a dynamic program, something that happens all the time and non-stop momentum. So by being so consistent all the time and having a program that is announced every first day of each month, and having a festival that runs every two years and so on, this made us always there and available and giving so much support. So then sponsors started to approve our pitching and then now we are financially, comparatively, we are way more stable because of…again and again, just being consistent and continuing no matter what.

I don't think we have faced any other challenges when it comes to the government, maybe shooting on the streets or something, I don't think it was a big challenge because they normally are okay with students learning photography. But again our biggest challenge was to sustain.

SA: I want us to shift from Photopia and speak about Cairo Photo Week. I came across Cairo Photo Week a couple of months ago, I think it was February, when the third edition launched and it was via a story on Instagram that Salma Elkashef put up, who is an incredible cinematographer and photographer, and she had put something I think was an exhibition that she had and I thought, huh, Cairo Photo Week?…why have I not heard of this?, and I kind of fell into this rabbit hole.

I want to hear about the progression of Cairo Photo Week because the deeper I started to read and explore, I was shocked that it was only in its third edition and it was actually quite young. You know, considering all the programming and workshops and events that you were doing, it feels like it was around for ages and so I want us to start with the first photo week which was established back in 2018 under the title, tell your visual story.

Can you tell us about moving into the business of festivals after running a photography hub for around, I guess at this point, it's like five or six years, right?

MAL: Yeah it was six years. We have actually been asked, maybe four years after we started, to start considering a photography festival and back then my answer was no, we are not ready and it's a huge responsibility and we know when we will be ready for that and it will just come out organically.

2016 I was approached by National Geographic Abu Dhabi, this was four years after our commencement in 2012, to be one of the residential judges on their reality tv show, it's called I'm a National Geographic Photographer and it was in the Arabic language and it was a big hit back then. Then, when I got this email from National Geographic Abu Dhabi, then I felt at that moment, oh now Photopia is being acknowledged. For me it was a milestone because I've been working so hard without noticing if we are seen or not, or maybe I didn't care much but I was so thrilled. For me it was like a push forward just to not give up and stay as you are. Then we launched Photobook Egypt, I know that we will talk about that later.

But in 2018 we felt very comfortable to consider a photo week that we had a very small plan for and it was mainly for maybe a couple of workshops and maybe five - seven talks and that's it and it was planned in March 2018 first. And then it got a bit bigger because we had a very strong partner, Al Ismaelia for Real Estate Investment, the company that actually is reviving a big portion of Downtown Cairo's buildings that they own and then they renovate. So they always support initiatives and festivals and art and culture and then it got bigger. So we launched the first one in November 2018 under the message tell your visual story, and because this is not just a documentary or contemporary photography festival, it also targets commercial photographers and commercial photography as a way of living. It's because Photopia was always built on the fact, or the mission, to teach photographers how to make money out of photography as a profession, as opposed to just being a hobbyist or just teaching photography without helping them to actually build a business out of it, even if it's through documentary or journalism, just to know how to market. So this was a hybrid festival targeting all kinds of genres in photography and I received very positive comments from international speakers who were amazed because they told me that they never really thought that they could attend a successful festival that hosts both pillars of this industry, like documentary journalism versus commercial, like fashion, food and everything. And actually what happened was a miracle, that people started to connect and instead of, let me be honest, demeaning each other's fields in photography you know, “you're a commercial photographer and you're not an artist like me or you don't care about people and you're talking about society”… so it ended up that they actually met and they connected and they started working together and they started understanding each one's side of the profession and it was a miracle. That's why we started with tell your visual story, because actually we believe that even commercial photography has to have a story and it's not limited to just telling a documentary essay or telling a story about the people or about climate change but it's also about…I mean if you don't have a proper image if it doesn't tell you a story, then it's not a proper image even if it's a dish of pasta. So everyone during this edition, all those speakers and instructors being documentary journalism, hardcore war photographers, even fashion photographers, they all sent the same message of how to be a storyteller. So every edition's theme or message is very strongly linked to the needs of that phase.

SA: So, 2021, we're in the middle of a pandemic and we have the second edition of Cairo Photo Week, a hybrid of virtual and physical. What was it like adapting to real world changes?

MAL: Me, as a person, I was in denial for a while when it came to COVID and I was very frustrated with this, probably like everyone, but my denial level was quite high.

I was very, of course, very, very cautious and I wore masks all the time, but I was not willing to have the world, I mean, I was not accepting the pause. We truly needed to work to make things happen and to pay our bills and not to lose the whole momentum. So, of course, it was planned in 2020, because it's a biannual festival, so we had postponed it to 2021, due to COVID.

And it was a hybrid in a sense that people had the choice to attend in person or virtually. But actually, we had all speakers, unless someone got COVID or something, to actually give the talk in person on the stage because when it comes to Egypt and the Egyptian audience, they don't relate much to online education, and they don't like it much. What proves my point is that when one of the instructors actually got COVID, but he was actually feeling fine, we had to shift his talk from in person to online. When it was actually aired online on a big screen to the audience, waiting for him to join, once they figured that it was online, they left. They left the theatre because they always feel that there's a barrier. I think it's more like an Egyptian culture thing. So moving it to a hybrid was mainly about the audience's choice to either attend in person or stay at home and feel more safe if they want and lucky enough, it was between two waves, the third and the fourth in Egypt. So it was quite safe at that point. Lucky enough, no one really…we did not hear of anyone who got COVID out of the festival, because we were also quite cautious.

The theme was depth off field, and by that we meant not the field, or the genre in photography, because back then, due to the oppression that was faced by the journalists in Cairo and, you know, not allowing them to cover so many events that were happening, due to so much censorship, lots of those photojournalists lost their jobs and they lost their opportunities to make a living out of photography. So they started to resort to different fields in photography, like wedding photography, food, shooting event photography, conferences and stuff.

So we were noticing, again, the change in the market by having different fields of photography. Either they shift from one field to another, or they could actually be working in two fields at the same time. So we decided to promote the idea that you don't have to be very, very stiff in your genre, and you should learn from different photographers and to explore different fields in photography. There's no shame in actually being a fine art photographer or a documentary or a heavyweight journalist to move or to shift your career towards a more commercial one. There's no shame. So we started promoting this idea and this notion, and again sharing everyone's experience with everyone else. So we actually hosted a war photographer turning into fashion or actually shooting both at the same time. We hosted documentary photographers who are actually amazing wedding photographers. So people had their eyes and minds open to, just to change their very stiff notion about sticking to a specific genre. By then, amazing things happened afterwards and people started to learn more about different fields. When you see a photojournalist who is technically extremely strong, shifting to wedding photography, they result in just fabulous photos. Fabulous perspective and a very, very fresh eye that is built on strong education and strong training. So this has actually enriched the whole industry.

And it has, you know, charged the whole industry with new kinds of competition and healthy competition from learning from each other and stuff. So, yeah, that's why we called it depth off field, it's not versus of, it's just off field, as if we're just encouraging people to leave their now field and consider other new genres in photography.

SA: Right. So that was the second edition. Now we have the third edition, which is the latest one that happened in February, and was themed Back to Raw and the tagline is, “Cairo Photo Week is back, bigger and more diverse. Photographers are taking over downtown Cairo this February”. As someone who wasn't even in Cairo, this is just me as an observer online, it felt like a takeover. It felt like there was so much happening. It felt quite intense in a good way. And so I want to know, what is Back to Raw and can you tell us about putting on a third edition that is, as the tagline says, you know, bigger and more diverse?

MAL: I think this was just a caption on our…the tagline was more about going back to the origins of the practice, of the language. It's not, of course, the literal raw images, but it was about learning from the really older pros in this field. Why? Because we have sensed, and again, it applies I think to the whole world, we have sensed that change in the quality of the photo due to the fast moving…I call it the fast paced, fleeting image due to the digital, due to the new digital world.

Of course, we cannot deny or escape the presence and the strong presence of the digital parallel universe but we can definitely tell the new generation of photographers to just take care because producing an image is something that you should do with quality and with enough time and you make the image rather than just taking the image. So we, as I mentioned on the website, we are starting to fear the idea of having so many fast photo eras, just like having, you know, just like fast food. So we're calling it fast photo.

We were actually trying to send a counter message just to slow down, learn from the pioneers in the industry, who are not old schoolers, who are still progressive, and they know their practice, and they have been developing over time. They don't need to be old people, they could be young people but they know how it all started, and they got to know the proper education, either through online or through trial and error. But we were promoting the idea of going back to the origin and back to proper practice. Before you click the shutter, just understand how to make a proper photo, either through cinema, talks about cinematography, documentary photography, videography, and so on.

SA: Putting on Cairo Photo Week for the past few years, what is it that you've noticed that photographers and image makers need?

MAL: In the past few years in Egypt?

SA: Yeah, in Egypt.

MAL: Yeah, they need constant mentorship and they need guidance. They need someone to give them reviews on a regular basis. They need help when it comes to proper advertising and promoting their work and pitching to clients.

We need to also build a proper client or, commissioner versus photographer, legal relation here because some people don't pay the photographer and some of the photographers actually get paid, but they don't deliver their images. So we need to elevate this industry using better contractual agreements.

They also need maybe a proper platform that you can log in and just find a full directory of photographers or an almost comprehensive one. So that's what we did in early 2022. It was a year now that we launched our photographers listing on our website. We had it classified into 24 different categories and it's a totally free service where people can add their names and actually have their names on the listing for free to everyone to choose from looking for an architectural photographer, looking for a food photographer, looking for a documentary one, looking for videographers but I'm sure that we are still missing lots of people. We're just trying to develop it over time.

SA: I'm seeing some really interesting parallels from the kind of discussions that came up when we had our roundtable discussions. So it seems like this might be a regional thing as well.

Still staying with Cairo Photo Week, what are the complexities of putting on a citywide festival that has so many moving parts? The last one that happened in February, it felt like there was so much happening. How complex is that?

MAL: In terms of what, in terms of management?

SA: Yeah

MAL: Yeah, I just count on a team that has enough consciousness to deliver everything on time because it's delivered accurately and on time…because it's really crazy.

SA: It looks crazy!

MAL: Yeah! I think also, we are perceived with high credibility when it comes to speakers and the crowd.

Actually, speakers, they don't give us a hard time at all. They're all very punctual and very responsive and very giving on the stage. Even starting from the youngest ones to the most established names in the whole industry. So we are quite lucky, because I think we have sent this vibe of credibility over the past 10 years, that we take things extremely seriously and there's no joke, really. So we ended up attracting people who are like us, and who are in it for actually delivering and they don't bail on us…so that's why…it's just a whole cycle of credibility and integrity that makes our job easier on the ground and we end up with less troubleshooting. But now we have a bigger team as well, so this made us a bit able to actually produce and plan a bigger festival.

Yeah, that's it, I think.

SA: I want us to move to Photobook Egypt, which launched in 2016. Besides the hub, and giving birth to a festival, Photopia is also a publisher and I guess this could be quite an obvious question, but why was publishing on the agenda? Why was that next thing for Photopia? And why was it the right time to publish?

MAL: Yeah, that was back in 2016 when I visited for the second time, in London, The Photographers Gallery in London, just to get more inspiration. I was there on tourism and I found this amazing photobook series that was printed in low budget. I have to give credit to the Café Royal series.

SA:Yeah

MAL: You know that right? Series of books.

SA: Yeah.

MAL: And it's a great model and photobooks in Egypt are really sold at really high prices, especially those big coffee table books. Why? Because, I understand, it's because printing is really expensive because they end up printing abroad and this may make the whole cost really high and they end up selling them expensively. I mean, at a higher price. Yeah, it's worth every pound, but it's not accessible to everyone.

So this A5 size, this budget printing photobook, really intrigued me. So when I came back, I contacted the photographers that I trust and who have strong photo essays about Egypt and I decided that we should start printing and publishing low budget photobooks to be available for everyone and they're not hardcover, mainly in soft cover, paperback and we found a good printing house in Egypt at the French Institute. It was all paid by us, we did not even find a grant for it and it was a great, great, great pilot project.

I consider it a pilot project, featuring and publishing nine different titles and books. They're all about Egypt in bittersweet storytelling and narration and we launched one of the book launches at GPP in Dubai and we used to sell them at Photopia and across one of the most famous bookshops in Cairo, Alef Bookstores. But when Alef was shut down by the government, we couldn't continue and we decided to put this project on hold.

I thought of reviving the project again and I think this could be a good solution for so many photographers who would self-publish by printing only 50 copies as a pilot thing to be sold on the book signing day only. And then the photographer could actually take this success, this little success story, to a big publishing house in Europe or in Egypt or anywhere and to tell the publishing house that we have already printed 50 copies and they were all sold out on that opening night and we have a guaranteed success story for you. So I think we could consider doing this again, just to help the photographer to have a CV of photo books printed and published and he can take it to the next level later on.

SA: That's really interesting. I never really thought about, I guess, low budget photo printing the way Café Royale does. It is really intriguing because I remember when I first saw Cafe Royal books online, I thought they were quite big, and that they were not A5 and then I saw them in real life and how delicate they were, but it gets the story across. So I really hope that it is a revived project because it's super interesting and it's important.

I think this allows us to move on to my next point. One thing that came up in my discussions the other day with Sueraya Shaheen, who is the co-founder of the non-profit magazine Tribe Photo Magazine, was the subject of archiving and the role of the magazine and archiving photography and storytelling in the region. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on archiving in the region.

I know you said that Photo Book Egypt is on pause, but the role that plays in archiving and storytelling in relation to the region.

MAL: Archiving is one of the most essential projects that anyone could actually consider, you know, taking care of or start initiating it, I would really appreciate him or her doing that. We have amazing initiatives around the region. I think, for example, the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut. And if you mean it's archival in that sense, or you mean just documenting?

SA: I guess archiving in general, I think in a very broad sense.

MAL: Okay, yeah, so it's either through photo books, because owning photo books in anyone's personal library actually keeps things handy where they can access it all the time and show it to their kids and stuff, rather than having things just documented online. But, definitely, as what we do when it comes to archival photography, we promote it all the time. We have a print shop that sells photography prints by living legends who have very, very powerful archival photography but we sell it to the public, and people appreciate it so much.

In the Arab world, actually, they do appreciate, and I'm talking specifically about Egyptians, archival photography. To own it and pay maybe a small fortune, more than they actually do for modern photography. So there is a huge market there and we should not just keep it online. We should not just keep it for educational purposes, or for, I don't know, corporate purposes, we should really offer it to the massive public who truly appreciate it and have the money and the financial capability to support this photographer or to support their kids, maybe he has passed away or something, and they support their kids.

This cycle, in this region, I believe that it's missing the collector's part. So we truly have to offer the collector who is, even if he's a new collector, or if he doesn't know anything about this world of photography, we should really come closer to him, and be more friendly and less intimidating, because there is a huge demand there. This demand would definitely create a very good source of income for the photographers and it will keep history alive, and it will keep the archives in every home.

So, of course, and I'm talking here about the archives that still have their own negatives where people can, where the owner can print and he can resell at limited editions or at open ones. So this is a huge market, honestly, that should be applied on a massive scale, on a bigger scale, at least.

Like what we did last time, during Cairo Photo Week, we featured Farouk Ibrahim, our legend, our Egyptian legend in photojournalism. We unboxed a big portion of his never-seen-before photos, and it was a huge hit. Besides having the World Press Photo Exhibition World Tour in Cairo, Farouk Ibrahim, I think he outshined the World Press Photo. I mean, this was a legendary exhibition.

SA: He's a legend.

MAL: Yeah, he’s a legend! Everyone wanted to buy his photos.

SA: I think it speaks to issues of access and I know now there's a wave of younger people buying art and owning art. It's all about access and allowing people to have…it's access. That's what it is for sure.

In our call before we did this interview, like a week ago, we mentioned briefly the influence of photography in the region, in West Asia, North Africa or the Middle East and North Africa. What is your view or your prediction as someone who has been in the industry for a while now? What are you seeing in terms of trends or what do you hope for the future of photography in the region? What are you seeing?

MAL: I'm seeing more regional content that is on the rise when it comes to…you can always sense it through stock photography. Because stock photography is a genre that everyone thinks low of and does not really respect but actually, stock photography could sustain a living for so many photographers, like a constant source of income.

And again, I want to highlight something, they don't need to announce that they sell stock. They could find a steady source of income through commercial or stock photography where they can sell their images to the whole world and they don't need to announce it if it really shakes their artistic image. But again, they should consider steady sources of income.

Anyway, I'm seeing the images, the global images, the things that you can see online, now you can see more Middle Eastern content or Arab content or regional ones that are becoming more accessible and more and more used by people who commission photographers rather than using an image, an open right image from Google. They could actually now hire photographers. So we have more aware people who hire photographers and clients and companies. And even on the documentary level, the UN or those international organisations and foundations, they do hire photographers for specific projects.

This was actually triggered stronger by COVID because due to, you know, the whole staying at home thing, international photographers, European especially, were not allowed to travel on missions. So big agencies and news agencies decided to count on the local photographers. So now you can see more local and regional photographers being featured abroad and this is an amazing opportunity and gives so much hope for photography in the region.

But if you were to ask me about AI and all that, I mean, when it comes to that in the future, I have no idea if it's a threat or not. So far, I feel that an image would always be powerful if it's an original one and if it's originated by a specific photographer who has his own mind and eye. I think AI would never be able to replace a photographer, at least when it comes to a specific mission or a specific subject or topic that he has to cover. I mean, some of them.

But this region has so many amazing talents and we should nourish and help them grow.

SA: This is why I'm really glad that we're finishing this week with a, I guess it could be like a Cairo Photo Week - Tasweer collaboration, you know, us coming together and having a conversation.

I just want to round it off with Photopia and what you hope for Photopia in the future. What is next?

MAL: We will still continue on delivering. Probably we're gonna have a photo week in a new city in Egypt, we're going to spread through the North a bit. We will move towards the North by the end of this year, but I have a bigger dream. Besides sustaining and staying alive and all that, I really hope to start working on…it’s more of a national project, but this needs funding. I wanted to go to tour around the many governorates around Egypt that we have and to start teaching photography, basics of photography, to reach out to those zones who cannot afford to come to Cairo or they don't know anything about photography. So it's more of a national project that I'm still working on and I need to pitch to someone who would appreciate this and have many rounds of basics of photography, education and mentorship across different cities in Egypt. Why? Because I want them to learn photography and to make a living out of it and to stay in their own city and not to leave it and to serve his own city rather than moving to Cairo.

SA: Inshallah, this is something that happens and is successful. I'm so thrilled that you took the time to speak to us this evening.

I know we experienced some technical difficulties, but we pulled through at the end. You've mentioned so many points and concerns and hopes that loads of photographers here in Doha expressed during our round table talk. So there's a lot of parallels and it's really interesting and I look forward to seeing our region thrive and grow in photography and I thank you for playing such a pivotal role in that.

Marwa Abou-Leila, it's been amazing. Thank you so much for your time.

MAL: Thank you.

SA: We hope to see you here in Doha soon, inshallah.

MAL: Inshallah, thank you so much for this and I enjoyed it. Thank you.

SA: Thank you so much. Yeah, that's it! Bye.

MAL: Bye and see you soon in Cairo, hopefully.

SA: Yes, for sure. I'll see you soon, inshallah, bye.