User:Moftahmostafa

Mostafa Moftah

Mostafa Moftah is a conceptual fine artist born and raised in Cairo, Egypt. He is a painter, a musician, a graphic designer, and a self-taught photographer. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Cairo University in 1977. He has exhibited his paintings at many groups and solo art shows. His paintings are in the collections of the National Museum of Contemporary Arts. He studied classical guitar in his teens with an Italian teacher "Salvatore Passaro" and played in a rock band for three years.

Mostafa has worked in advertising for 28 years. He was an art director for many leading advertising agencies in Cairo including Leo Burnett. As well as graphic design, he directed TV commercials and wrote music and lyrics for some of them. Later he ran his own graphic arts studio serving many organizations including American Express, UNICEF, Renault to name a few.

He started taking photos to help his paintings, bought dark-room equipment, and taught himself how to develop film and print photos. Eventually, he fell in love with photography as a tool to express himself. 30 years later, he decided to quit his advertising career to devote his entire time to photography while also finding time to paint and create music. He has chosen the creativity in photography overpainting and music because it gives him what he was looking for all his life: a sense of freedom as well as responsibility.