Leila Alaoui was a Franco-Moroccan photographer and video artist born in Paris in 1982 and raised in Marrakech from the age of six. She studied photography and sociology at the City University of New York.
Her work explored cultural identities and migration through documentary portraiture, combining formal precision with close attention to people often reduced to statistics or stereotypes. In 2016, she died in Ouagadougou after being fatally wounded while documenting an Amnesty International mission. Her photographs and films continue to circulate internationally and remain central to discussions on representation, borders and human dignity.