Laura El-Tantawy

Laura El-Tantawy is an Egyptian photographer & self-publisher exclusively working on long form projects exploring social & environmental issues pertaining to her background.

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Laura El-Tantawy is an Egyptian photographer. She was born in Worcestershire, England to Egyptian parents. She attended high school in Saudi Arabia, started university in Cairo, Egypt and finished in the US. She reads, writes and speaks Arabic, thinks and dreams in English and feels both. This unusual blend carries through her photographic work. Her photography is inspired by questions on her identity - exploring social and environmental issues pertaining to her background.

In 2002, she started her career as a newspaper photographer with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Sarasota Herald-Tribune (USA). In 2006, she became freelance to pursue personal projects. She is a graduate of the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia (USA) with dual degrees in journalism and political science. Additional education includes an MA in Art and Media Practice from the University of Westminster (UK/2011) and a Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford (UK/2009).

Her first book, In the Shadow of the Pyramids, offers a first person account exploring memory and identity against the backdrop of her native Egypt’s political turmoil from 2005 to 2014. Self published on Jan. 25, 2015 to coincide with the anniversary of the Egyptian revolution, it has been named as one of the best photography books of 2015 by several critics and book collectors. It earned the nomination for the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2016.

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