Mohamed Mahdy has won the III Mediterranean Prize Albert Camus

admin8 months ago on news

Mohamed Mahdy‘s project “Here, the Doors Don’t Know Me” has been awarded the III Mediterranean Prize Albert Camus.

Mohamed Mahdy on stage talking about his project at the Rethinking the World and Premis 2024 Award Ceremony held at the island Menorca, Spain from May 3 till May 5, 2024.
Photo: David Arquimbau Sintes

The Premi Mediterrani Albert Camus Incipiens is awarded every two years to an author with an emerging career whose research proposal and journalistic reflection (graphic, photographic or written) dialogue from their own prism with the Camusian testimony and with the way of understanding the journalism of Albert Camus.

The award is given to a single person and is materialized in the production in the form of a book or exhibition, depending on the characteristics of the awarded work; in its dissemination through the usual channels of the Trobades; and in the participation and presentation of the project in the 2025 edition.

“Here, The Doors Don’t Know Me” is an interactive story made in collaboration with local residents of a small fishing village in Alexandria, Egypt. Since 2015, Mohamed Mahdy has documented how the inhabitants are suffering from the rapid urban development in Alexandria. In the project Mahdy combines his own photographs with handwritten letters and private archival material from the displaced local residents. As part of the bigger project, Mahdy made a story about Tamer (image) as his final Diploma Project at DMJX.
Photo by Mohamed Mahdy and hand written text by Tamer.

Mohamed Mahdy has already received a lot of recognition for his project; for instance he won the Open Format at World Press Photo 2023 and the Photography Prize of the Fondation des Treilles.

Another DMJX graduate, Sara Younes was among the three finalists for the award. She was nominated with the project At a Peter Pan Moment made after she graduated our Egyptian Language of Photojournalism Programme in 2022.