Photo by Muhammad Salah
Please join the Magnum Foundation and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture on November 6 for an online event, Ways of Becoming: The Photographic Journeys of Three Sudanese Photographers.
The event will feature photographers and Arab Documentary Photography Program alums Metche Jaafar, Salih Basheer, and Muhammad Salah, who will reflect on how photography has accompanied them through change, and on the memories, experiences, and ways of seeing they continue to carry with them. They will be joined in conversation with curator and photographer Ala Kheir. The conversation will be in English, with Arabic translation available.
Friday, November 6, 2026
Online Event
12PM - 1:30PM New York Time
7PM - 8:30PM Cairo Time
Since 2014, the Arab Documentary Photography Program (ADPP) has provided support and mentorship to 115 photographers from across the Arab region. ADPP is a joint initiative of the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, the Prince Claus Fund, and Magnum Foundation.
About the presenters
Metche Jaafar is a Sudanese photographer and visual artist based in Cairo. Her practice explores memory, identity, femininity, motherhood, and belonging through photography and moving image, drawing on personal and collective histories of displacement and social change.
She is the founder of The People’s Manifesto: A History of Resistance project and a co-founder of Najima Collective, supporting Sudanese photographers and visual artists in exile. Her community-led art project, Remains from Home, explores memory, care, and home in exile with Sudanese women in Cairo.
Photo by Federico Gastoncabrera
Salih Basheer (born in 1995, in Omdurman, Sudan) is a Sudanese photographer. After finishing high school in Sudan, he moved to Cairo in 2013 and received his Bachelor's degree in Geography from Cairo University in 2017. During his studies in Egypt, he started as a self-taught photographer, and subsequently studied photojournalism in Denmark.
In 2021, Basheer received the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund student grant for his personal project 22 Days in Between. For the same project, Basheer was awarded the Everyday Projects Grant, In January 2023, Basheer published 22 Days in Between, the first ever photo-book by a Sudanese photographer, and the book was awarded the 2023, Les Rencontres d’Arles Photo-Text Book Award.
In June 2022, the British Journal of Photography presented Salih as one of 15 upcoming photographers, In 2024, he joined Magnum Photos as a nominee.
Muhammad Salah Abdulaziz is a Sudanese photographer and curator based in Berlin. His practice is shaped by observation, chance encounters, and a slow engagement with his surroundings. His work examines cities, relationality, and the ways physical and psychological spaces are organised and experienced. He has exhibited and published internationally. Abdulaziz holds a B.A. in Linguistics and an M.A. in African Verbal and Visual Arts, with a focus on curatorial studies and media in Africa.
Ala Kheir is a Sudanese photographer, filmmaker, educator, and curator whose work explores memory, identity, belonging, and the relationship between people and place. Through long-term photographic and documentary projects, he examines the social and cultural landscapes of Sudan, creating visual narratives that reflect both personal experience and collective memory. His work often focuses on themes of migration, displacement, urban life, and the changing realities of Sudan and the wider region.
Alongside his artistic practice, Kheir has played a leading role in the development of photography education in Sudan and beyond. He is a co-founder of the Sudanese Photographers Group (SPG) and founder of The Other Vision (TOV), a mentorship platform that has supported emerging photographers from Sudan and the diaspora since 2012.
His work has been exhibited internationally across Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. Kheir has also served as a juror, mentor, and educator for numerous international photography initiatives, including the World Press Photo Contest, where he served as a jury member in 2022and later as Chair of the Africa Jury and a member of the Global Jury in 2025.
Through photography, film, education, and cultural exchange, Kheir continues to contribute to conversations around contemporary visual storytelling and the representation of Sudanese narratives on the global stage.
Magnum Foundation events are made possible by the Henry Nias Foundation and our Circle of Friends.
