About Folk Atlas
Each of us carries a world within, a world shaped by memory, place, and the stories we inherit and transform. When these personal worlds meet, overlap, and interact with others, they expand. New meanings emerge, new perspectives form, and a larger collective story begins to take shape.
Folk Atlas was created to bring these worlds together.
Through a series of visual storytelling workshops for young storytellers held across Egypt’s governorates between September and December 2024 — followed by continued mentorship through 2025 - participants learned to translate their personal experiences into visual narratives. They explored photography, writing, and emerging visual media, experimenting with how stories can be told, seen, and shared.
The program in his first cycle was to build a collective map of stories across Egypt: an open archive shaped by the voices of its young people.
In this digital space, visitors move between hope, dreams, and barriers through personal memories, environmental change, intimate traces of daily life, and shifting relationships between humans and technology. Each participant brings a world of their own, fragile, powerful, and deeply rooted in the places they come from.
Some trace the slow disappearance of Alexandria’s front line, piece by piece. Others read Egypt through its traces, the objects, gestures, and arrangements that quietly hold human stories. Some observe how technology reshapes connection and distance. One project moves through letters and longing; another returns to Mustafa’s home, where nothing has changed since his mother passed twenty years ago, and where he continues her quiet ritual of feeding street cats and dogs.
This archive is open, growing, and always in conversation. We hope more stories will join it, expanding the map, enriching the dialogue, and weaving a layered record of Egypt’s social, cultural, and emotional landscapes.
Folk Atlas program instructors & Creators
Mohamed Mahdy (Egypt, 1996)
A visual storyteller and educator from Alexandria, Egypt.
He graduated from Pharos University in Alexandria (PUA) with a degree in Arts and Design. In 2021, he was awarded the Photography & Social Justice Fellowship by the Magnum Foundation. In 2022, he received a scholarship from the ECCA Family, completing two diplomas at the Danish School of Media and Journalism (DMJX) in Aarhus, Denmark. He also participated in several visual-narrative workshops and seminars with National Geographic, AFAC, PCF, Mawred, and completed an artistic residency at ESA – L’École Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence.
In 2018, Mahdy was named by The New York Times Lens Blog as one of
12 emerging photographers to watch. In 2022, he was selected by
The Guardian as one of
five emerging talents in photojournalism, and he won the 2022 Canon Student Development Program.
Mahdy has presented three solo exhibitions in Egypt, and his work has been shown internationally, including in
Take Me to the River (2021) at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and the Altonaer Museum in Hamburg. His work has also been exhibited at the Institut du Monde Arabe in France, Geopolis in Belgium, Photoville in New York, and the Sharjah Art Foundation.
Recently, Mahdy won both the regional and global awards at World Press Photo 2023 for his interactive web documentary
Here, the Doors Don’t Know Me. He is also the recipient of the Photography Prize from La Fondation des Treilles and the III Premi Mediterrani Albert Camus – Incipiens Award.
www.mohammedmahdy.com Ghazi Al-Naji (Iraq- Denmark)
A visual storyteller and educator from Alexandria, Egypt.
He is a Danish-Iraqi freelance storyteller and journalist. Ghazi Al-Naji has a background in academia and cultural entrepreneurship: He holds a degree in physics and journalistic storytelling from Aarhus University and the Danish School of Journalism. He has created spaces and gatherings for culture, community, and language exchange and co-created culture festivals. In addition, he has taught and tutored at every level he has completed: From primary school to university. Now based in Copenhagen, he has started his journalistic journey with the forward-thinking Danish media institution Føljeton in addition to being selected for Zetland's talent programme.
Credits
The team behind “Folk Atlas” includes Mohamed Mahdy, Føljeton, and Ghazi Al-Naji, with funding from Danish Arab Partnership Program.
The program’s first edition aimed to produce a series of narrative newsletters, enabling participants to present their work both locally and internationally in collaboration with the Føljeton.
Project Coordination and Management: Hager Elhady.
Creative Direction and Visual Coordination: Mohamed Mahdy, Ghazi Al-Naji.
Website Art Direction & Development Team [Babel Studio]:Project Manager: Amr Ismail.
Visual Designer: Tarnim Youssef.
Webflow Developers: Mohamed Azzam & Amr Ismail.
Participants: Ahmed Nagy, Heba Hamza, Mohamed Abdelrahman, Osama Mostafa, Shahen Mohamed, Zeina El-Dansoury, Mariam Ashraf, Mirna Abbas, Ali Mostafa, Mohamed Hassan, Rania Deabes, Ahmed Mansour, Ahmed Alaa, Fares Altaby & Bassma Khaled, Nadine Ali, Esraa Kamal.
© All copyrights reserved for Folk Atlas 2025.
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