Karim El Hayawan is a Cairo-based visual artist and interior architect. After founding Design Point Studio in Cairo in 2002, he began to develop his photography under the mentorship of Alaa Abdel Naby of Reuters, focusing on both portraiture and landscape throughout Egypt. With a passion for street photography, El Hayawan is continuously inspired by his hometown of Cairo, relentlessly seeking images that define the complexities of the ever-expanding urban metropolis. Ultimately, photography serves as his narrative tool to reveal commonalities in collective life experiences, with key themes of his work being the question of movement and the concept of universal metaphors.

His work has been exhibited at the Contemporary Arab Photography Biennale at the Institut Du Monde Arabe in Paris, France; the Grid Cape Town Biennale in South Africa; and the O-Biennale titled Something Else, the al-Ahram Salon for Fine Arts, and Darb1718, all in Cairo, Egypt. He has also been featured in numerous publications throughout the region. El Hayawan is the founder of Saturday Morning Walks, an initiative that invites participants to explore different neighbourhoods in Egypt through street photography.