Muhammed Muheisen's Refugee Children: A Photo Analysis

Author Note

The following is an analysis of one of Muhammed Muheisen's recent photos depicting Afghan child refugees. The analysis looks at the background of the conflicts in Afghanistan, Muheisen's background as an Associated Press photographer, and an in-depth analysis of the photos.

Introduction

According to a UN report (2013), Afghanistan is the leading country in the world that serves as a source of refugees, and its neighbor Pakistan is the leading country in the world that hosts them (p. 7-8). Earlier this year, Pulitzer Prize winner and Associated Press photographer Muhammed Muheisen released photographs of the people he has the greatest personal interest in showing—the children on whom the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan take their toll. All of Muheisen's photographs are startling and moving, but it is the photograph of Robina Haseeb, age 5, Zarlakhta Nawab, age 6, and Khalzarin Zirgul, age 6 that this analysis looks at more closely.

Muhammed Muheisen is no stranger to war-torn countries and refugees such as the Syrian refugee crisis. According to his 2013 Pulitzer Prize biography (2013), he was born in Jerusalem and spent years covering, for the Associated Press, the conflicts in Israel-Palestine and Iraq. Muheisen has lived in Islamabad for the last several years, and, Rawlings (2014) has said of his work photographing the Afghan refugee children, “'I wanted to [photograph] them to show what I see every time I step in those slums'”. Muheisen has a stated purpose of bringing the suffering of those affected by the ongoing civil unrest in Afghanistan to light for the viewing of the greater population. By choosing the subject of the youngest, most vulnerable people who have no stake in politics or the outcomes of wars, he appeals to the viewer's deepest sympathies, showing the horror of war through a particularly poignant lens.

The background of the subject is as serious as the goal that Muheisen brings to it. According to Amnesty International (1999), ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan have had an absurdly high human cost. Refugees who originally fled from war remained in other countries as the Taliban took control, then as the US invasion of Afghanistan tore their country apart again. There are children in Pakistan today who have literally never known their home country. Amnesty International says:

Since the armed conflict began after the Soviet invasion in 1979, civilians - women and children in particular - have suffered enormously from the devastating consequences of continuous fighting...Hundreds of thousands have been killed or injured in indiscriminate bombing and shelling of residential areas. Thousands have been arbitrarily arrested, tortured and raped, "disappeared", or murdered for their political affiliation, ethnic identity, gender, or in reprisal attacks by the various armed groups fighting for control of territory. Schools, hospitals, homes, and farms have been burned and destroyed leaving millions of Afghans displaced and dispossessed. (1999)

Muheisen's subjects in the pictures chosen as the subject of this essay are young children, one of the groups said by Amnesty International to be the most affected by the conflict in the area. The first girl, Robina Haseeb, is wrapped in a colorful scarf, and looks directly at the camera, her eyes wide and her mouth set in a puckered line. The expression is both one of hope and one of a child who has seen and been affected by much in her time. The focus on her wide, childlike eyes and the hard line of her mouth are a contrast, as is the brightly colored scarf against her face streaked with dirt. In an article accompanying the pictures, Muheisen commented on this contrast in Rawlings (2014). “'Their tough life makes them look older and react as elderly people, but their innocence is right there in their eyes.'” This dichotomy is apparent in the photo. The same look can be seen on the face of Nawab. Only Zirgul smiles and her smile seems a sad representation. Perhaps it is only the pride she has in holding her younger cousin that can conjure this smile at all.

Just as Muheisen has a subject firmly in place, so does he have an audience. The audience is not intended to be the people who know these conflicts, the people who live in divided places or in refugee camps. The audience is people who have never known such children, to whom such children are abstractions. Muheisen clearly intends to show his audience a world they have not seen before, and would likely never see if not for people like him insistent on showing it to them. Muheisen's audience is not limited to Western countries like the US, but any place where refugees are not a known part of life. Muheisen aims at the parents of well-clothed children, the teachers of children with shoes, the friends of children with cellphones. In short, he attempts to bring a world to people who do not and have never known it.

The message of these photos seems clear: to show the suffering that, until the viewer looks directly at these children, is only an abstraction—something heard about on the 6 o'clock news, something briefly mentioned as a statistic. Here are children from an area that Khalid Mufti's (2014) recent psychological study shows to have incidences of post-traumatic stress, major depressive episodes, substance dependence, and lifetime psychotic disorders. These statistics become visible in the faces of these children as possible futures, not yet fully realized.

Muheisen also mentions in Rawlings (2014) that his point or message is to get the viewer to know the child's name. When the child becomes a name, not a number, she becomes real to the viewer of the picture. Muheisen, then, has a message of imbuing these people with a sense of reality by bringing them to an audience beyond those who see her life every day. “'...instead of being called “The Afghan refugee boy and girl,” they will be called and remembered by their names.'”

As for the composition of the pictures, they are standard (if anything about it can be said to be standard) portraits, straight-on, with the subjects looking directly at the camera. There is a certain “unflinching” aspect to the shots—on both the part of the children and the photographer. The children do not shy away from having their lives documented, and Muheisen does not shy away from documenting them. Nor does the viewer have the opportunity to look away from these children.

The colors in the photos are bright, contrasting with the subjects' dark eyes and the smudges of dirt on their faces. These bright colors suggest a life beyond that of a refugee, the life of joy a child might have in other circumstances, where play does not consist of finding something to help the family subsist for another day. The bright colors show the youth of the subject more than the expression on their face, or in their eyes.

The overall meaning of the photos, as stated before, is to bring an unflinching look to the lives of children who were mere statistics prior to the photographs. Muheisen has a clear purpose, and that is to show the human toll of war and the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. His use of children makes the message even clearer.

Due to the way that the photos have been taken up across the internet and in multiple newspapers, it looks as if Muheisen's goals have been met. These children are now known, in this report and many articles, by their names, their eyes, and the lives they live.

References

“Afghanistan: Refugees from Afghanistan: The World's Largest Single Refugee Group.” Amnesty International. November 1999. February 17, 2014. Retrieved from: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA11/016/1999/en

“UNHCR Midyear Trends 2013.” United Nations. June 2013. February 17, 2014. Retrieved from: http://www.unhcr.org/statistics

“The 2013 Pulitzer Prize Winners.” The Pulitzer Prizes. 2013. February 17, 2014. Retrieved from: http://www.pulitzer.org/biography/2013-Breaking-News-Photography.

Mufti, K “Psychiatric Morbidity Among Afghan Refugees in Pakistan.” Retrieved from http://ayubmed.edu.pk/JAMC/PAST/17-2/Khalid%20Mufti.htm. February 17, 2014.

Rawlings, N. “Muhammed Muheisen's Portraits of Young Afghan Refugees.” Time Lightbox. January 28, 2014. Retrieved from http://lightbox.time.com/2014/01/28/muhammed muheisens-portraits-of-young-afghan-refugees/?iid=lb-gal-viewagn#20. February 17, 2014.