About this episode

Katherine LaGrave interviews photographer Nathalie Mohadjer about her immersive experience in Siwa, Egypt.

Welcome to Unpacked, Five Questions, a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of one great travel story. In this episode, executive editor Katherine LaGrave sits down with documentary photographer Nathalie Mohadjer, whose images of the desert oasis of Siwa appear in Afar's winter 2026 issue. For four weeks in Siwa, an ancient town some 450 miles from Cairo, Nathalie traded the typical three-day shoot for a slower kind of immersion — sharing breakfasts in the old town, spending afternoons with a local woman named Fatima, and bathing in a hidden cold spring with her family's kids. She talks with Katherine about photographing a community where Siwan women are rarely seen by outsiders, why patience and respect matter more than the camera itself, and how losing your sense of time in the desert can change the way you see a place. She also shares advice for travelers heading to Siwa — and the one moment she chose not to capture. Meet this week's guest Nathalie Mohadjer is a German-Iranian documentary photographer based in Paris whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Monocle, and Le Monde. Episode highlights How a stranger waving from a window in Siwa's ruins led to weeks of…

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