A decade-long Egypt project wins
Egyptian photographer Mahdy took the Africa long‑form regional prize for Moon Dust, a project that took nearly a decade to complete and documents a residential area now home to almost 60,000 people. Long-form work like this matters because it rewards patient, sustained visual reporting rather than quick-document bursts — and it signals editors will keep commissioning deep projects. (infobae.com)
On April 10, 2026, World Press Photo named Egyptian photographer Mohamed Mahdy the Africa regional winner in the long-term projects category for “Moon Dust,” a body of work he built over nearly a decade in Alexandria. (worldpressphoto.org) The project is set in Wadi al-Qamar, which means “Moon Valley” in Arabic, a neighborhood in western Alexandria that sits beside a cement factory. Older residents remember barley fields and open land there; Mahdy’s pictures show homes, streets, and children now covered by industrial dust. (takemetotheriver.net) World Press Photo’s 2026 contest says the story belongs to its Africa region and lists “Moon Dust” as the region’s winning long-term project. The foundation’s 2026 collection describes Mahdy as a visual storyteller from Alexandria whose work often focuses on hidden communities inside Egypt. (worldpressphoto.org, worldpressphoto.org) The reporting took years because the story itself took years: families in Wadi al-Qamar were not dealing with a one-day disaster but with constant exposure to dust from nearby industry. An American University in Cairo exhibition in 2022 described the essay as a close-up record of a community living with devastating air pollution. (gapp.aucegypt.edu) One World Press Photo caption says Abdelrahman, a resident photographed in the series, won two lawsuits and received 200,000 Egyptian pounds after years of illness and legal struggle. That detail turns the project from atmosphere into evidence: the dust is not just visible on walls and clothes, but tied to court fights, sickness, and compensation claims. (worldpressphoto.org) Different descriptions of the neighborhood give different population counts, which shows how hard it can be to pin down a place like this with one clean number. One recent project page says about 60,000 people live there, while a Prince Claus Fund feature from March 2026 says more than 30,000 people live within about ten meters of the factory. (takemetotheriver.net, princeclausfund.nl) Mahdy is not a newcomer who appeared with a single lucky image. World Press Photo’s profile says he was born in 1996, is based in Alexandria, studied arts and design at Pharos University, and has built a practice around communities in Egypt that are usually ignored or disappearing from view. (worldpressphoto.org) The jury report for the 2026 contest says “Moon Dust” stood out for long-term dedication and for the depth and intimacy with which it shows the health hazards facing the community. In an annual contest often dominated by war zones and breaking news, this win came from staying in one neighborhood long enough for the story to accumulate names, illnesses, lawsuits, and history. (worldpressphoto.org) The result is a prize for a project that works less like a headline and more like a time-lapse: the same streets, the same dust, and the same families seen long enough for consequences to become impossible to dismiss. World Press Photo will open its 2026 exhibition in Amsterdam on April 24, putting that Alexandria neighborhood in front of a global audience. (worldpressphoto.org, worldpressphoto.org)
