Selected from a pool of 200 nominees, five alumni of the Arab Documentary Photography Program (ADPP) have been chosen to participate in the 2025 Joop Swart Masterclass.
The Joop Swart Masterclass, organized by World Press Photo, is an educational initiative designed to support emerging photographers. The program includes three components: a period of online mentorship, an intensive in-person masterclass in Amsterdam, and post-program community presentations in each participant’s home country.
Among the five selected ADPP photographers, two are also current fellows of the ADPP Alumni Fellowship, a program that extends ADPP’s longstanding mission by supporting alumni as they develop new work and deepen their engagement with documentary storytelling. Together, the photographers bring diverse and powerful perspectives from across the region.
Ameen Abo Kaseem, a Palestinian-Syrian documentary photographer, explores themes of memory, displacement, and identity. His recent project Two Songs of Diaspora (2024), developed through the ADPP Alumni Fellowship in collaboration with Sara Kontar, examines home, exile, and self-discovery, bridging the physical and emotional distances between Syria and the diaspora. In his earlier ADPP work, How was Everything, Before All This Ruin? (2021), Ameen delved into the psychological aftermath of war.
Amina Kadous, an Egyptian visual storyteller, created White Gold (2020) during her time with ADPP. The project explores the legacy of Egyptian cotton in her hometown of El Mehalla.
Imane Djamil, a Moroccan documentary photographer, focused on the lives of people in her project Slow Days in the Fortunate Isle (2022). Her project tells the story of a small kingdom divided into two very different parts, an East shaped by its lost past and a West full of illusions.
Gabriel Ferneini, a Lebanese self-taught photographer, developed Doumari (2022), a project capturing the haunting atmosphere of Lebanon’s nights during its economic and political crisis. Wandering darkened streets, Ferneini used light and shadow to document what remained and what was fading, offering a poetic reflection on collective identity and memory in a time of crisis.
Maen Hammad, a Palestinian photographer and human rights researcher, uses skateboarding as a lens to explore themes of liberation, youth culture, and resistance. His project Landing (2024), initially created through ADPP and further developed into a photo book via the Alumni Fellowship, is a visual manifesto that examines the relationship between skateboarding, space, and freedom within the context of Palestinian life under occupation.
The presence of five ADPP photographers among this year’s Joop Swart Masterclass participants is a testament to the program’s enduring impact. In a media landscape where the region is often misrepresented or simplified by reductive narratives, ADPP continues to offer vital space for photographers to tell their own stories—nuanced, and local. Their selection highlights the ongoing need to support documentary practices rooted in lived experience and independent vision.