Since the fashion industry has recently been blooming in the region, Identity decided to select and acknowledge every month, an individual who has influenced the fashion scene in the Middle East. We find this to be a great opportunity to inspire Middle Eastern fashion individuals from fashion designers, to models, photographers, stylists, bloggers, and everyone in between.
IDENTITY’S DECEMBER FASHION ICON IS: ABU SAMRA
Abu Samra is one of the most successful and talented yet very humble- In a time where modesty is underrated and actually very rare to find- photographers in Egypt and the Middle East nowadays. In a very short time, his name managed to make it all the way to the very top.
You’ll be even more surprised when you learn that all of his professionalism and photography skills are self-taught. It all started when his sister (who was teaching mass communication) bought a DSLR camera. It caught his eyes right away and he started to discover it out of curiosity and instantly fell in love with it. He started discovering all the features in the camera and watched a lot of online basic photography courses. It all came with practice and self-learning.
His first professional fashion campaign was the “Color-Revolution” campaign for Ice-watch back in 2011. In 2012, he decided to make photography his profession and had nothing else in his portfolio back then. With the help of his friends, he managed to make a couple of fashion photo-shoots until he landed big campaigns.
Abu Samra did a lot of photo-shoots for some of the best fashion designers, celebrities and magazines in Egypt. In 2015, He won the “Best Fashion Photographer” award from “Jumia Awards.”
He just finished shooting the new Samsung Gear S2 Watch campaign, and he’s now working on his new state of the art studio which is equipped like no other in Egypt. He never stops to aim for higher goals and works hard to reach them. He definitely earned his spot as December’s fashion icon.