Recalling stills from the golden era of Egyptian cinema, Youssef Nabil presents an intimate and elegantly staged portrait of French actor Salim Kechiouche.

Fascinated by film and film stars as a child, Egyptian photographer Youssef Nabil (b.1972) set out to capture the contemporary paradoxes of the Middle East through the lens of fantasy, mimicking the splendor of the imaginary worlds seen in film. After graduating from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt in 1993, Nabil was the photography assistant to Mario Testino in Paris, France. He began to develop his own technique of formal portraiture set in elaborate narratives, which were enhanced by his unique style of hand painting his photographs. In 2003, Nabil was awarded The Seydou Keita Prize for Portraiture from the Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie, Bamako, Mali and in 2005 he was honored by the International Photography Awards, Los Angeles, CA. His first film, ‘You Never Left’, was first exhibited in 2010. His work has been the subject of recent solo shows at Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, Paris, France (2012); Nathalie Obadia Gallery, Paris, France (2011); Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, NY (2010); Savannah College of Art and Design, Atlanta, GA (2010); GALERIST, Istanbul, Turkey (2009); Villa Medici, Rome, Italy (2009); The Third Line Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2009); and Volker Diehl Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2009).