He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer who has travelled the world documenting conflict and lives of refugees.
Muhammed Muheisen is a Jordanian national who was born in Jerusalem in 1981. Since 2001 he has documented major events around the world, in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa and the United States of America; including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the funeral of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the US led -war in Iraq, the capture of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, the Yemeni revolution, the Syrian civil war, the funeral procession of the late president Nelson Mandela, as well as events in Saudi Arabia, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, France, Greece, Macedonia, Germany, Croatia, Austria, New York, the Netherlands, Serbia, South Africa. For over a decade he has been documenting the refugee crisis across the Middle East, Asia and Europe.
Muheisen is also National Geographic Photographer, founder of Everyday Refugees Foundation and a Canon Ambassador. He has received several International Awards including TIME Magazine’s Best Wire Photographer and UNICEF Picture of the year.
I caught up with Muheisen while he was on ground in Greece, documenting the refugee crisis there. He hopped into his car and got onto Skype to speak to me. “When I got to know you work with children, I said yes for the interview immediately.” — says Muheisen. A lot of his work revolves around capturing refugee children’s situation. “Children all across the world want one thing — to have fun and be happy.”
“When I was 9, I found my grandma’s Polaroid camera and fell in love with photography. Back then we didn’t have the resources to buy a camera. I became obsessed with trees and landscape.” Born in Jeruselem, Muheisen is no stranger to conflict himself. “But that wasn’t what I was aiming to capture with my camera. My environment played a major role in my life. I was always surrounded by news. I could either help get the news or be the news.” He studied Journalism & Political Science and combined his education with his passion for photoraphy to document things around him. Muheisen took photography as a selective course and worked on his first assignment as a photographer in first year of his college and documented the Israel-Palestine conflict. “There were clashes and funerals everywhere. I remember how as a young photographer I just took my camera and walked in the middle of the conflict without thinking much.”
“I started traveling the world and most of these countries shared one thing in common — conflict. Along the way, after many years of work, I realized that I wasn’t a war photographer but rather a photojournalist who wants to tell stories. So I started to focus mostly on people — the ones who are really affected by the conflict. I started getting closer to them to know more about them, who they are and where they come from — and decided to share their stories with the world.”
I ask him about lessons learnt from years of working as a photojournalist and what advice would he give to young photographers — “Safety is priority. If you go to cover an important piece of news but by the end of it you’re not alive to deliver, it all went for nothing. I always tell young photographers and journalist to know where they are stepping. Don’t just throw yourself in a situation or place. Secondly, wherever you go, study the background. You need to know the environment you are walking in. One of the most important things is to respect people’s cultures and traditions. You shouldn’t just play the foreigner or the superior. If you don’t gain people’s respect, you’ll never be able to document reality. It’s so important to spend time in an environment you want to tell a story about. Because that’s your access into their lives. You can’t just pop-up and expect to tell the whole story.
Muheisen worked as an Associated Press photographer in Pakistan for years and felt that there is much more to the country than shown in mainstream media. “I went to Pakistan and spent four years there and I feel that I did not do justice to that place. I fell in love with the country. I went there with an absolute stereotype about the place and after four years I became part of the landscape and understood the culture. I did not even speak the language. It was all about the energy, all about gestures. I didn’t need to speak the language for the people to trust and respect me,” he says.
“During my stay in Pakistan, I saw children grow in front of my eyes. So I decided to portray some of them in my photographs. There was this little girl who I saw almost as an infant. Her name is Laiba and she’s an Afghan refugee girl. Before leaving Pakistan, I photographed her in 2014 and that picture went viral. I started getting letters and packages from all across US and Europe and so I had to go back and find her. Her father said, ‘I didn’t know there are people out there who would think of us’. That’s the impact of photography. These people are not just refugees. They are not just internally displaced people. They have names, they have ages, and they have hopes and dreams and a background.”
In 2017, one of Muheisen’s image of a child with hauntingly deep eyes was awarded Picture of the Year by UNICEF. “In 2005 I met a young girl in Jordan called Zahra. She was four year old back then. I saw this young traumatized girl leaning on her family’s tent. I approached her and tried speaking to her but she hardly spoke back. I photographed her after taking permission from her parents and then asked her ‘what should I bring for you the next time I come to see you from Amsterdam?’, she said ‘I want hair ties with Mickey Mouse figures.’ Since then I kept going back year after year to see her. I just came back last week from there probably for the tenth time. Zahra became a part of my life as I became part of her’s. I see her growing up but she is not getting basic rights every child should. Like education. These stories for me are life lessons. You learn the most from children. They never give up.”
As someone who is constantly surrounded by conflict, I ask him about how his job as a photojournalist has changed him as a human being. “I learnt that people can adapt to any place and situation. The children I document, who play with stones and sand are happier than children who play with play-stations. We are however, blessed to have a roof on our heads, a home to go back to. I feel lucky to be the guy who just documents the refugee’s lives rather than live their life.”
Through photography, Muheisen is using social media to spread the word about refugees. He founded Every Day Refugees, an NGO which helps document, educate and empower refuges and internally displaced people by war, natural disasters, poverty and discrimination.
