Photo essay: Yomna El Beyaly’s In Her Own Way
A new public exhibition in Amsterdam takes the viewer inside the lives of women and girls in Cairo
A young woman lies back on a pink velvet sofa, looking at her phone. Three friends in leopard-print hijabs gather on a busy street at night. In another image, a hand with yellow acrylic nails grips a rhinestone-studded steering wheel.
These are some of the everyday moments captured by 23-year-old Egyptian-French photographer Yomna El Beyaly in In Her Own Way, her solo exhibition now showing at Mercatorplein, a public square in Amsterdam. The exhibition is part of a larger collaboration between Middle East Archive and Foam.
Taken primarily in Cairo, Beyaly’s photographs offer an intimate and colourful portrait of the lives of women and girls. Patterned curtains, velvet sofas and candid portraits reflect her interest not only in the women themselves, but also in the effect they have on the world around them, shown in the way they decorate and arrange their homes.
For Beyaly, photographing Cairo has also become a way of reconnecting with the city and her family. While growing up in Paris, she visited during the summer holidays but rarely had time to explore on her own. After being approached by Middle East Archive and Foam earlier in 2026, she returned to Cairo in May to take new photographs for the exhibition. The series brings together images made between 2021 and 2026.
Rather than staging photographs, she captures everyday moments spent with the women in her family, from trips to the hair salon to the hours spent getting ready for a night out. “Everything, all those chaotic moments, for me, are very important,” she says. “At the end, I ended up with girls, girls, girls, because that’s who I spend my life with.”
Each time Beyaly visits Cairo, she takes thousands of photographs, capturing the moments she shares with her extended family. Back in France, she misses their company and the time they spend together. “I need to take that amount of images,” she says, “so it’s enough for me for the rest of the year, you know?”
In Her Own Way / شوية وراجعة is on display at Mercatorplein, Amsterdam, until 29 October 2026.
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