Born in Oran, Algeria, in 1982 to a Sudanese father and an Algerian mother. Abdo Shanan studied telecommunications engineering at the University of Sirte, Libya, until 2006. Returning to Algeria in 2009, his growing interest in photography first took shape in 2012 with an internship at Magnum in Paris. Over the next decade, his work gradually gained an international reputation, marked by major international art and photography awards, including the CAP Prize (Contemporary African Photography) for his Dry project in 2019, a selection for the prestigious Joop Swart Masterclass of the World Press Photo in the same year, or the Premi Mediterrani Albert Camus Incipiens in 2020. His work is also regularly published in the international press.

Alongside his individual practice as a photographer and artist, Abdo Shanan is dedicated to collective and curatorial projects, always with the aim of highlighting and encouraging new contemporary views. Thus, in 2015, he co-founded Collective 220, a collective of Algerian photographers currently comprising 10 photographers based in Algeria and abroad. In 2020, he co-curated the exhibition Narratives from Algeria with Danaé Panchaud at the Photoforum Pasquart in Bienne. He is also co-curating in 2022 a new exhibition on contemporary Algerian photography, Rhymes from Untold Realms, organised by the association Djelbana with the Centre de la photographie Genève. In 2021-2022, he is the recipient of the Pro Helvetia On the Road Again grant with the collectives 220 and KOZ for an exchange and residency project between the Moroccan and Algerian art scenes.

More information on his work is available on his website:

https://www.abdoshanan.com