Romany Hafez
Romany Hafez is a Cairo-based photographer, visual artist, and lecturer whose work blends contemporary aesthetics with Egypt’s ancient spiritual and cultural heritage. With a practice rooted in conceptual and analog photography, he explores memory, presence, and sacred space through poetic imagery and layered visual narratives.
Hafez is widely recognised for his exploration of Coptic identity and language, using photography as a bridge between modern artistic expression and millennia-old cultural traditions. His work evokes quiet reflection while provoking questions about cultural continuity and personal connection to place.
Romany Hafez studied at the School of Applied Arts, Helwan University, where he focused on creativity and design alongside Egypt’s Coptic linguistic and artistic legacy. Over the past 15 years, his artistic journey has centred on reimagining ancient Coptic heritage within a modern context. His work incorporates deep photographic and textual research, expressed through analog and double exposure techniques that reflect the layered identities of the places and subjects he engages with.
Hafez has developed a unique typeface inspired by ancient Coptic language, which complements his visual practice and furthers his commitment to cultural preservation. As a regular lecturer on Coptic heritage, language, and art, he shares this knowledge with younger generations of artists and researchers. His photography often centres on lesser-known monasteries and sacred sites, with ghost-like human forms evoking spiritual presence within architectural space. Hafez’s conceptual framework rests on the belief that spaces have memory, energy, and agency, shaping those who enter them.
His exhibitions have included solo and group shows in Egypt, Lebanon, and the UAE, offering audiences an opportunity to engage with themes of spirituality, identity, and belonging through a contemporary lens.
Hafez’s work explores the metaphysical interplay between presence and absence, time and space, as expressed through sacred environments. His black-and-white imagery, often long-exposed and composed using analog methods, invites a meditative response. Human figures appear not as subjects but as spectral extensions of place—silent observers in conversation with the history, memory, and spiritual resonance embedded in architecture.
His research extends beyond photography into linguistics and writing. By documenting Coptic inscriptions, structures, and rituals, Hafez contributes to a broader understanding of a heritage that continues to shape Egyptian identity. His typeface design rooted in ancient script reflects a desire to merge design, language, and tradition in a single expressive system.
Romany is committed to public engagement through teaching, exhibitions, and collaborative artistic initiatives. His work resists superficial readings, drawing viewers into multi-sensory encounters that combine visual subtlety with symbolic depth. His belief in the energy of place—the way physical sites influence perception and emotion—guides both his methodology and aesthetic.
Through his practice, Hafez creates a living dialogue between the past and present, urging reflection on how cultural memory inhabits the physical world and continues to shape identity today.
Romany Hafez has exhibited his work across Egypt and internationally. His solo exhibitions include “Echoes of Serenity” (2025), “To Be Present” (2021), “Memorabilia… Paraphernalia” (2018), and “In Spaces, Beginnings and Memories” (2017), all held at Picasso Art Gallery in Cairo. Group shows include “Miscegenation” in Alexandria, “Dubai Meets the World” in the UAE, and exhibitions in Beirut and Salon Du Caire. These exhibitions explore themes of spiritual continuity, sacred space, and layered identity through a visual language rooted in analog technique and cultural symbolism.
