CAIRO — It can be tough and risky being a journalist in Egypt. Taking pictures can lead to questioning by people or police — sometimes even attacks or arrest. Affiliation with Al Jazeera can lead to jail time. And the country was ranked the second deadliest for journalists in 2013 by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Ask any journalist here to tell you a harrowing moment they have experienced over the past three years, and it is likely they can. Many quickly file such memories away to continue covering a fast-changing, sometimes bloody landscape. But the emotional toll lingers, as they bear witness to scenes most do not.

“I haven’t wanted to take pictures since Rabia [al-Adawiya],” a journalist confided to friends recently over dinner, referring to his witnessing the mass killing of supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi during dispersals of a sit-in in August 2013.

This week, as Egypt’s interim government holds a much hyped nationwide referendum on its amended constitution amid protests and a bomb blast, seven photojournalists for the independent daily newspaper Al-Shorouk are taking a rare artistic pause to reflect on “our joys and worries for our changing nation, and the scars it leaves in our hearts” in a photo exhibit titled “Shouf,” or “Look.”