Denis Dailleux’s *Habibi Cairo* is a photographic book about Cairo whose position is stated before a page is turned. The Arabic-inflected title addresses the city as beloved; the French subtitle, *Le Caire mon amour*, makes that intimacy explicit. Cairo is therefore framed not simply as a subject to be recorded, but as the object of a personal attachment. That distinction gives the book its interpretive key: the photographs are encountered through an avowed relationship between photographer and place.

The publication is concise—36 pages in a 14 × 18 cm paperback format. Its scale makes the book a concentrated sequence rather than a comprehensive account of the Egyptian capital. This restraint matters. The city is approached within the boundaries of an authored photographic work, allowing proximity and selection to take precedence over any claim to survey Cairo in full.

Published by Filigranes in 1999, the French-language volume includes a preface by Françoise Huguier. Her contribution introduces a second voice into an otherwise compact construction, placing Dailleux’s photographs in a considered editorial setting. The book also belongs to a broader group of his publications concerned with Egypt, while remaining sharply identified with Cairo through both title and subtitle.

For collectors, *Habibi Cairo* deserves attention as a clearly bounded point in Dailleux’s engagement with Egypt and as an example of how modest scale can sharpen a photobook’s premise. Its significance rests neither on claims of rarity nor on elaborate production, but on the coherence of subject, address, sequence, and editorial collaboration. The bibliographic specificity of the Filigranes publication—ISBN 9782910682408—further distinguishes the volume within the photographer’s body of books.