{"id":60566,"date":"2025-07-12T21:28:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T21:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/60566\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T21:28:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T21:28:14","slug":"moises-saman-pulitzer-prize-winning-photographer-portraying-peoples-dignity-has-been-my-guiding-principle-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/60566\/","title":{"rendered":"Moises Saman, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer: \u2018Portraying people\u2019s dignity has been my guiding principle\u2019 | Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Moises Saman won two Pulitzer Prizes for photography in May. One was in the Feature Photography category for his coverage of Syria after the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad<\/a>, which he undertook for The New Yorker. The other was in the International Coverage category, as part of The New York Times team covering the war in Sudan<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In a video call with EL PA\u00cdS from his home in Jordan, the 51-year-old Sam\u00e1n explains that he came to his profession by chance. He was born in Lima, Peru, moving to Barcelona at the age of two. And, in his teens, he moved to the United States. There, he distributed phone books, washed dishes and waited tables in restaurants. Without fully understanding English, he randomly enrolled in a sociology program at a college \u201cwhere they let anyone in.\u201d And there, he saw them: several photos of the then-active Yugoslav Wars that his professor showed him. \u201cI reacted to that,\u201d he recalls. <\/p>\n

Today, he\u2019s a photographer for Magnum Photos, the most prestigious photographic agency in the world. He has covered extensively the conflicts in countries such as Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Egypt, among others. He contributes regularly to The New York Times, The New Yorker and Time \u2014 among other giants \u2014 and has been recognized with several World Press Photo<\/a> awards for his work. <\/p>\n

Question.<\/b> Many journalists dream of winning a Pulitzer Prize. You won two. How does that feel?<\/p>\n

Answer.<\/b> It\u2019s obviously profound and moving for me, but also somewhat uncomfortable. I wish the value given to those images was given to the lives of the people I photographed, but the world doesn\u2019t work that way. They\u2019re the ones who have lived \u2014 and continue to live \u2014 with the consequences of war.<\/p>\n

Q.<\/b> You arrived in Syria two days after the fall of the Assad regime. What did you find?<\/p>\n

A.<\/b> An exhausted country. There was a mixture of resignation and a lot of dignity. People who have only known war \u2014 especially young people \u2014 find it hard to imagine the future, to imagine something they don\u2019t know. The end of the dictatorship doesn\u2019t mean happiness or freedom, but rather the beginning of another form of uncertainty: not knowing what happened to your children, your cousins, your mother, your father.<\/p>\n

Q.<\/b> What did it mean to return to Syria at that time?<\/p>\n

A.<\/b> I felt compelled to return. I covered Syria intermittently since the early days of the war. It was like coming full circle on a conflict that shaped my career, both professionally and personally.<\/p>\n

\"MoisesMoises Saman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist for the Magnum agency, in a courtesy photo.<\/p>\n

Laura Boushnak<\/p>\n

Q.<\/b> In what way?<\/p>\n

A.<\/b> It changed the way I approach my work and understand the complexity of these conflicts. In war, the roles of victim and victimizer are constantly interchanged. And I wanted to convey that complexity visually. It meant rejecting objectivity and the idea of the journalist as someone trying to change what\u2019s happening. That idealism was shattered.<\/p>\n

Q.<\/b> Your photos of Syria have a strong aesthetic component. How can one beautifully portray something so horrendous?<\/p>\n

A.<\/b> I always try to keep in mind that I\u2019m photographing people; I don\u2019t want to reduce them to the category of \u201cvictim.\u201d I try to be more ambiguous visually. That opens other aesthetic doors; you can take other liberties, like this idea of photographing what\u2019s not photographable \u2014 absence, what remains, pain \u2014 which was very important in the photos of Syria. This has forced me to look for different aesthetic solutions; I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s beauty.<\/p>\n

Q.<\/b> Is there an image from the series that has particularly impacted you?<\/p>\n

A.<\/b> A very simple one, of a wall in a prison filled with faded fingerprints. The fingerprints of people who \u2014 upon being prosecuted \u2014 were made to mark their fingerprints [in ink]. Perhaps they then wiped their fingers on the wall. Each fingerprint represents a person with a story, with a family. We don\u2019t know if they\u2019re still alive, but that\u2019s what\u2019s left of them. That left its mark on me.<\/p>\n

\"FingerprintsFingerprints on a wall in the prison known as \u201cPalestine Branch,\u201d the last physical trace of detainees who disappeared under the Assad regime.Moises Saman (Magnum Photos)<\/p>\n

Q.<\/b> There\u2019s one photograph of a former prisoner on the floor of that same prison, recreating his torture, while his father looks on. How did that photo come about?<\/p>\n

A<\/b>. It was incredible. The boy\u2019s name is Motasem Kattan; he\u2019s in his twenties. We interviewed him at his home, two or three days after he left prison when the regime fell. He and his father insisted on taking us to the prison for the first time since he\u2019d gotten out. I think that was his way of taking back control of his life: returning to that place, but in a completely different context than the one he\u2019d been in just three days before. He showed the truth of what had happened to him. He wanted to touch the same walls, the same cell, so there would be no doubt that this had indeed happened to him.<\/p>\n

Q.<\/b> What makes a good photo?<\/p>\n

A.<\/b> A photo you can interact with. One where all the information isn\u2019t there. One that forces you to look twice, where you find a personal connection, even if it\u2019s about something you have nothing to do with. You have to feel something. It\u2019s not so much about information, but about the heart \u2014 something visceral, even if you can\u2019t quite define that connection in the moment.<\/p>\n

\"MotasemMotasem Kattan recreates his captivity in the Syrian prison known as \u201cPalestine Branch,\u201d where he was detained and tortured for over a year.Moises Saman (Magnum Photos)<\/p>\n

Q.<\/b> Jon Lee Anderson \u2014 your colleague in Syria and legendary journalist for The New Yorker \u2014 writes in the text<\/a> accompanying your photos: \u201cAlong with the physical evidence of violence, there was a less obvious register of human loss \u2014 a phenomenon that Moises observes with singular sensitivity and skill.\u201d Can you describe that register of human loss? <\/p>\n

A.<\/b> They\u2019re elements that can humanize a situation that\u2019s inhuman, or that has lost all humanity. Details that allow the viewer \u2014 someone who\u2019s never been in these contexts \u2014 to connect with the person in the photo. With the photos we see every day from Gaza<\/a>, for example: how many more photos can we continue to see of dead children<\/a> \u2014 right in your face, the strongest photos \u2014 and we don\u2019t react? There\u2019s something there that we\u2019ve lost, the power to react to something so inhuman, so unjust. So, we have to try to find other solutions. Perhaps taking a photo of the bedroom of one of these children \u2014 which they left behind before they died \u2014 perhaps this could have more of a connection with the viewer than seeing a photo of a lifeless child. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

Q.<\/b> What place should journalists occupy in conflicts like those in Syria or Gaza?<\/p>\n

A.<\/b> We have to preserve the dignity of the people going through these experiences. That\u2019s something that\u2019s been a guiding principle for me. Telling the stories with the complexity they possess, because they\u2019re stories of people with names, biographies, dreams, memories and fears.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moises Saman won two Pulitzer Prizes for photography in May. One was in the Feature Photography category for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":60567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,43810,1033,171,99,10419,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-60566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-bachar-el-asad","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-sudan","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114842390120514379","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}