24 - 27 January — Visual Arts

Marwa Abou Leila (born in 1977) is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Photopia: An independent photography school in Cairo. Marwa was graduated from Ain Shams University Commerce – English Section in 1999. She has been a photography enthusiast ever since. After quitting her banking career in 2011, she got together with a friend, Karim El Khadem and both founded Photopia in May 2012 for the sake of offering both emerging and established photographers an ongoing platform to learn, meet, interact and get opportunities to bridge with their role models in the image industry. The photography school collaborates with Egypt’s and the region’s top photographers to deliver valuable photography education to the community.

In late 2016, she launched Photobook Egypt: Photobook Egypt: a powerful series of photography books; each dedicated to a theme or a project photographed and narrated by remarkable Egyptian and regional photographers (whether emerging or established) and curated and published by Photopia Cairo. Our dream is to offer a non-digital platform to document extraordinary photography work and make it accessible and affordable to photography enthusiasts & collectors. It is an ongoing project of enjoyable and visually rich photography that proudly represents Egypt’s and the region’s prominent photographers. Collecting them would be like owning a small part of Egypt on your bookshelf..

She is also the founder and curator of Cairo Photo Week: A photo festival in the heart of Cairo that brings together the most influential image makers of in Egypt and the region – launching its first edition in November 2018.

Website: www.photopiacairo.com