Abdo Shanan was born in 1982 in Oran, Algeria to a Sudanese father and an Algerian mother. He studied Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Sirte, Libya then undertook an internship at Magnum Photos Paris. In 2015, he co-founded collective220, a collective for Algerian photographers. In 2019, Abdo won the CAP (Contemporary African Photography) prize for his project ”Dry”. The same year he was selected to participate in the Joop Swart Masterclass by World Press Photo. In 2020, he was the recipient of Premi Mediterrani Albert Camus Incipiens and co-curated an exhibition, “Narratives from Algeria”, at Photoforum Pasquar in Switzerland.