Muhammed Muheisen's photography from places such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Palestine often show a very different side of life to that often portrayed in the media.
His ability to find real moments of life is shown to great effect with these images of people at play in makeshift entertainment parks taken while on assignment for AP.
Muhammed talked to National View about the work
Where did the idea for this set of pictures come from?
Whenever there was an occasion such as Eid or national holidays, wherever I was based I would go to parks and look for features to move on the AP wire. From the early days of my career as a photojournalist I loved being in amusement parks by myself and with my camera. When I was young, being in an amusement park wasn't on top of my family's priorities. So wherever I was - be it in the West Bank, Jerusalem, Jordan or when I was in Iraq covering the 2003 war, right through to when I moved to Pakistan as AP's chief photographer - I would look for these parks. Once I arrived in Pakistan my definition of an amusement park changed. I saw that you don't need an entertainment park to have fun. People created an amusement park from nothing. Children built swings using ropes and wood left on the ground. From then on, whatever assignment I was covering I would also look for those parks. In Kabul amid graves I found children enjoying a swing ride, in a Soweto township children on a metal climbing frame of a run down park and on the outskirts of Islamabad you find children seeming to fly while holding tight on to ropes. These are not just amusement park pictures, but also pictures of people seeking happiness and fun with the limited resources they have. From nothing they created something, that's how I now see those parks.
You have made your name, and won awards, for work in places such as Syria, Pakistan and Yemen, which are often in the news for various conflicts and tension. But it is your images of everyday life for which you are best known. It is a very different view of these countries than is often seen in traditional western media. How important is this type of photography is in portraying the people and the places that you work in?
As a staff photographer working for the Associated Press, my priority is to cover news happening around me. I am a wire photographer whose role is to capture events and show them to the world. However, I also have a passion for photography and I don't like to miss a chance to take pictures when there is no news happening around me. I am often travelling and based in countries that are shattered by wars or hit by natural disasters, but life doesn't stop. In the streets and alleys of these countries, people carry on with their lives and I never stop searching for those scenes - scenes that shows how life is more precious than death, scenes that carry messages of awareness through joy and fun.
When shooting these features do you think about who you are shooting for? Is it the people you photograph or is it the end viewer? Or are you just intent on connecting the two?
To be able to take daily life photographs you must first earn people's trust. You invest time to gain it, with or without language, and it is a long-term investment. If you are not welcome in a situation you will never be able to work freely. It is all about the people that you photograph. It is all about the subject who trusted you to move around and become invisible, you become part of their landscape. Everything is built on trust between what I call "two strangers" - me the photographer and the people that I photograph. It is not only a picture of a park, it is a picture of how you can be happy from whatever resources you have. It is all about the people that you photograph and when that picture becomes available to the viewer, they get to see the differences between a park in that world and a park in their own. The two parts, the viewer and the people that you photograph, complete each other, and this is how an image reaches its destination.
Is there any parallel between your work and these pop-up funfairs? Moments of fun or relief away from the everyday?
To be honest with you, when I capture an image full of happiness it immediately reflects on me. When I see what is making a child happy, this is where I learnt to appreciate everything I have in my life and I feel lucky.
You have a show on in Brussels opening soon. Is this work included? Are there any plans for the exhibition to be shown elsewhere?
The exhibition at Festival des Libertes in Brussels is all about the daily life of people in conflict zones and how life doesn't stop but keeps going no matter where you are. In November I have another exhibition at Angkor Photo Festival in Cambodia called The Pursuit of Happiness, which also shows daily life photography from several countries that I have travelled to and took images of slices of life.
What is the timeframe for the pictures? When did you start, when did it end, or is it a continuing project?
The first image taken in this series was in 2006 because I felt I finally had an image that I was always searching for, and they come right up to date. It is an endless project because it is all about people seeking happiness and amusement.
Are you a fan of funfairs? Is there something that draws you to them while out on assignment?
I can't imagine a someone not being a fan of fairs. It is one of the spots on Earth where you head to hoping to forget all about your day and yesterday and the day before yesterday. So yes, I am a fan of fairs. They are a place where laughs never end.
Do you have any fun or interesting stories behind the images? Things that happened, or anything that was said to you?
I was standing with a group of youths in some kind of a flying boat hooked with very fragile chains and moving so fast. At that moment four things were going through my mind: "Will I make it alive out of this space boat?"; "Will this ride ever end?"; "I hope I have one frame of this nightmare"; and "Why did I get into this thing?". Thinking of it now makes me laugh and my heart race.
More of Muhammed's work can be found via his social media -
Facebook Fanpage: Muhammed Muheisen Photographer
Twitter: Muheisen81
Instagram: @mmuheisen
