Lamees Saleh selected for Copenhagen Photo Festival 2024

admin3 months ago on news

Lamees Saleh Sharf El Din is among the 15 selectees for Copenhagen Photo Festival 2024. Lamees is selected on behalf of her project “Indefinitely” that she made during our Egyptian Language of Photojournalism programme that was held in co-operation with DEDI – The Danish Egyptian Dialogue Initiative.

Hala was kidnapped in 2016. In the picture to the left it’s her sisters, Heba, who is only one year younger than Hala, and Sarah, the oldest sister in Saft El Laban, Giza. In the picture to the right, it’s one of Hala’s dresses hanging outside the family’s home. Photo: Lamees Saleh Sharf El Din

Lamees Saleh Sharf El Din is based in Cairo. She started her career amid the January 25th Revolution of 2011 to express and document the states of loneliness and identity loss in her country. She was part of the DMJX educational programme in Cairo in 2022. Her project was also shortlisted for The Contemporary African Photography Prize.

The heart of “Indefinitely” lies in its documentation of the lives of the families grappling with the abduction of their children, woven together on a map that traces the trajectory of these harrowing narratives, the first of them coming from forty years ago with a family still searching for their daughter. Photo: Lamees Saleh Sharf El Din

In the project, Lamees collaborates with forensic artist Tim Widden listed by the National Crime Agency in London and his drawn images to mitigate the challenge faced by families who fear not recognizing their children as they grow older. Forensic artists draw on photo-compositing images of these children and family members to create the age progression. Photos from the project: Lamees Saleh Sharf El Din and Tim Widden

The 15 selectees were chosen out of 639 applications from 68 countries that responded to CPF’s open call to engage with the theme of Entanglement. The 15 Copenhagen Photo Selectees come from 15 different countries from Europe, Asia, Africa and the US and as a special feature on the occasion of the festival’s 15 years anniversary they plan to present all of these projects at the festival center in june – four with a solo exhibition and 11 in a group show. The four solo artists will be announced on February, 20 on the festival’s platforms.

Read more about Lamees Saleh Sharf El Din and her project at Copenhagen Photo Festival’s webpage.

Photo: Lamees Saleh Sharf El Din