Enri Canaj was born in Tirana, Albania, in 1980. He spent his early childhood there before moving to Greece when the borders opened in 1991. He studied photography at the Leica Academy in Athens and became a full member of Magnum Photos in 2021. The same year, Canaj’s published his first monograph, Say Goodbye Before You Leave. He is based in Athens and covers stories in Greece and the Balkans.
Since 2008, Canaj has been a freelance photographer for major publications such as TIME LightBox, The New York Times Magazine, MSNBC Photography, Wall Street Journal, Vice, Financial Times, and Le Monde. He has received awards from the Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation, LUMIX Festival for Young Photojournalism, NEON Foundation, iMEdD and Stavros Niarchos Foundation, as well as the Philip Jones Griffiths Award.
Examples of his work have been exhibited at Rencontres d’Arles, Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, LUMIX Festival in Hanover, Benaki Museum in Athens, Museum of Photography in Thessaloniki, BOZAR Center for Fine Arts in Brussels, Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece in Athens, Bilgi Santral in Istanbul, the European Parliament in Brussels, and Athens Photo Festival.
