Mohamed Hassan

“This is about my father. This is about me. This is about our hidden room.”

Our Hidden Room is a photographic and narrative project exploring the complex relationship between the artist and his father, a photographer living with bipolar disorder. During Hassan’s childhood in Egypt, his father became increasingly withdrawn and fixated on a small, dark room within the family home, a space that came to embody isolation, struggle, and silence. His condition remained largely unacknowledged, ultimately leading to his suicide.

Structured across six chapters, the work traces the father’s life from an orphanage in Alexandria to the Egyptian Army, where photography became both refuge and expression. Through image and text, the artist reflects on memory, inherited trauma, and the stigma surrounding mental illness. Reclaiming photography as a tool for healing, Our Hidden Room transforms loss into an act of remembrance and love.