Salma El Zamel (Sal) is a Canadian freelance documentary photographer and multimedia journalist. She draws inspiration from her Egyptian Turkic heritage as a Mediterranean North African shaped by migration and diasporic life. Her work explores the outward rituals of everyday life. Those often overlooked moments that quietly reveal people’s identities and social values.

Salma’s storytelling focuses on themes of identity and representation, intersectionality, lifestyle and material culture, and the power dynamics that lie between them. She has conducted fieldwork in Egypt following the 2011 revolution, as well as in Turkey and Canada. Alongside her creative and academic work, she collaborates with grassroots and marginalized communities through NGOs, offering support and consultation in communication strategy and content creation.

She holds an Honours BA in Political Science and an MRP in Globalization from McMaster University, as well as an MA in Sociology and Anthropology from Ibn Haldun University in Turkey.

Her approach to storytelling combines academic research with visual media to engage the public in critical, meaningful dialogue.

More of her work below.