Born in 1952 in Paris. Lives between Paris and Beirut.

After earning a degree in architecture in London in 1979, Elkoury turned to photography, producing a report on daily life in Lebanon. He covered the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982, and the resulting pictures appeared in Libération among other publications. He joined the Sygma agency in 1983, only to leave it one year later. From then on, he divided his time between Paris and Beirut. In 1984 he published Beyrouth Aller-Retour, a book on the life of a war-torn city. The following year he turned his lens to the Egyptian cinema, while simultaneously undertaking a series of portraits of Arab authors. His work on the urban landscape of Marseille resulted in an exhibition at the Musée de la Vieille Charité in 1986 and developed into a sustained interest in photographing cities: Rome, Amman, Djibouti.

In 1989 Elkoury joined the Rapho agency and won the Prix Medicis Hors les Murs, before spending a year in Egypt retracing the steps of Gustave Flaubert and Maxime Du Camp. In 1991 he took part in two collective series: first on the site of Petra, Jordan and the second in downtown Beirut capturing the aftermath of war. The later was published in an album Beirut City Centre by Editions du Cyprès, Paris and presented in an exhibition at the Paris Palais de Tokyo in 1993. The book has since become a landmark in the history of photography. The project inspired him a series of personal works on Charles de Gaulle airport and the divided city of Nicosia.

After the handshake between Israelis and Palestinians at the White House, Elkoury spent a great deal of time in Gaza and the Occupied Territories, which resulted in the publication of Palestine, l'envers du miroir by Editions Hazan, Paris in 1996. Two other books followed almost simultaneously: Suite Egyptienne with Editions Actes Sud in 1997 and Liban Provisoire published by Hazan in 1998.

In 1997 Elkoury co-created the Beirut based Arab Image Foundation, an organization that seeks to archive and preserve photography from the region while also making the medium more accessible. The following year he moved to Turkey and produced an extensive photographic travelogue, the last of his purely photographic series.

In 2002 the Paris Maison Européenne de la Photo commissioned Elkoury to create an exhibition for which he presented a new collection of photographic compositions, incorporating sequential images to emphasize meaning. As part of the exhibition he premiered his first video Lettres à Francine, based on his photographs of Turkey. A catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Sombres, was published by Marval. In 2003 he directed his second video Moving Out. An essay on photography La sagesse du photographe followed and was published in Paris in 2004.

In 2005 Elkoury began working on two new distinct works: a photographic project Civilisation, fake = real? produced with the support of and exhibited at the 6th Sharjah Biennial, and a video Welcome to Beirut. Following the summer 2006 war in Lebanon, he created On war and love, a photographic diary in 33 composite images. The series was first exhibited at Galerie Tanit in Munich, and then at the 2007 Venice Biennale. It was published by Editions Intervalles in Paris the same year.

Between 2008-2009, Elkoury developed a new project What happened to my dreams, a photographic series of 32 visuals addressing a range of contemporary socio-political issues as a natural extension of themes that he has been exploring throughout his career. This series evokes a sense of disillusionment, but also of acceptance at what cannot now be undone. It was exhibited simultaneously in Dubai, Paris and Beirut. In 2010 and 2011, he worked on abandoned Soviet military bases, mainly in Eastern Europe. In the summer of 2011, along with his exhibition at the Beirut Art Center, he published Be…longing at Steidl.