Since then, he has exhibited his work in the US, China and Germany, and his newest venture, The Canine Sat The place We Parted, is getting him seen. It was proven at Les Rencontres d’Arles final year, whereas Magnum photographer Myriam Boulos, who nominated Khattab for Ones to Watch, describes the work as “full of magic… poetic and private”.
Regardless of having related underlying themes, the venture is markedly totally different to the work of Khattab’s pupil years. Shot throughout his enforced year of Egyptian nationwide service as a military physician in 2017, it’s named after Antar, a stray canine with whom Khattab fashioned a shut bond over five-mile walks throughout the desert, and it responds to his emotions of intense loneliness as a soldier.
Males in khaki sit in the scorched Egyptian desert, their faces principally obscured. The pictures have an atmospheric high quality – all extensive skies and lengthy shadows. They’re set beside brief, achingly sincere verses of poetry: “I’ve been ridiculed/made enjoyable of/crushed… I cried a lot.” The troopers are unaware that Khattab is photographing them. The complete venture was shot covertly, half of the artist’s bid to precise his vulnerability via pictures. “Abruptly, my aspirations, desires… regarded identical to everybody else’s. It was one of the best challenges of my life,” he writes.
