About me:

Jihan is the Mideast Deputy Photo Director for AFP (Agence France-Presse) at their regional headquarters in Nicosia. Based out of diverse locales such as Cairo, Tehran, Paris, and Nicosia, Jihan has worked as a professional photojournalist and photo editor for over ten years covering stories from Baghdad to Sydney. Jihan received her Bachelor of Science in 1992 in Mass Communications with a minor in Political Science from Ithaca College, New York. Her career in journalism began in Cairo with Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt’s best known English-language newspaper. Her work in the mainstream media shaped her perspective and led her to pursue a documentary approach in a personal body of work on the everyday lives of people in the Middle East. While photojournalism mostly records history in public places, Jihan’s work pictures personal histories in private spaces. She is a 2003 recipient of the Fifty Crows International Fund for Documentary Photography Award for her picture essay on the everyday lives of family and friends living in Egypt and Iran. Her work has been exhibited around the world including most recently at the Institute du Monde Arab in Paris, the Fotographie Forum International in Frankfurt, African Biennale of Photography in Bamako, Mali, the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, and the Fifty Crows Gallery in San Francisco.