Mosa’ab Elshamy, born in 1990, is a photojournalist covering daily news stories, as well as in-depth cultural and social documentary projects across the Middle East and North Africa. His work has been described as dedicated, humane and intimate. He is currently based in Morocco as a staff photographer for the Associated Press.
When the Egyptians rose up against Hosni Mubarak in 2011, photography was still a hobby for Mosa’ab, who was studying for his Bachelor degree in Pharmacy. But the uprising triggered a shift in focus, and he switched to photojournalism, this time as a career. Since then, his extensive coverage of the Egyptian revolution and its consequences has gained him wide exposure, providing images and stories to TIME Magazine, Paris Match, The New York Times, Rolling Stone and Aljazeera English. As a freelancer, he supplied images to agencies including AFP, EPA and Getty Images and has had images featured on the front pages of multiple newspapers and publications across the globe.
In 2013, TIME picked one of his photographs from the violence in Rabaa, Egypt, among its best 10 photos of the year. He won an Award of Excellence from Pictures of the Year International competition for the same image. He was then selected by PDN among its 30 Emerging Photographers in 2014, as well as one of the Guardian’s Top 10 Youth in Digital Media for his use of social media to bring focus to his work and country’s tumultuous events. In 2014, he won The Bob’s award that recognized his work from the streets of Cairo.