Saturday April 14, 2018 By: WOE Team
Egyptian visual researcher and photographer Heba Khamis, 29, won first prize in the Contemporary Issues Stories, in the 2018 World Press Photo contest. Khamis’s photo was selected from entries by 4,548 photographers, from around the world. She’s the first Egyptian female photographer to win this award.
The freelance photographer received the award for her project, Banned Beauty, about the practice of breast ironing of pubescent girls in Cameroon. This practice is carried out in order to delay or reverse breast development of young girls with the notion to protect them from rape or sexual advances.
In 2017, Khamis also received the PHmuseum’s Women Photographers Grant, and the Ian Perry award.
She graduated with a bachelor in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Alexandria, and shifted her career to become a photojournalist. Khamis covered the two revolutions in Egypt, freelancing for the Associated Press News Agency (AP), the European Press Photo Agency (EPA) and “Xinhuanet”, the Chinese News Agency. She also worked as a photojournalist for the Egyptian newspaper, El Tahrir.
After volunteering in Uganda, her photography evolved, “from hard news to a more documentary style,” she says. Her work now focuses more on the social and humanitarian issues “that are sometimes ignored.”
In 2016, she obtained a diploma in photojournalism from the Danish school of media and journalism. In 2017, she received another diploma in photojournalism fromHochschule
Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Khamis is working on mixing her artistic skills and the photojournalistic experience to create her own style in documentation.
Her previous projects included Women of Villages, which focused on Egyptian village breadwinners’ women. She is currently working on Refugees Gay Prostitution in Germany and Transgenders in Egypt.
Photos courtesy of Heba Khamis’s Facebook page and website.
Visit Heba Khamis website here
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Women of Egypt Mag 
Outstanding work! Wow! The pictures caught my breath with their rawness and beauty. Heba Khamis should be extremely proud of her accomplishments and also for the depth of her photographs. I look forward to seeing more of her work.
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