Photographing in Isolation Time

Amr Alfiky and Naeem Mohaiemen discuss Alfiky’s experience of photographing the pandemic lockdown, economic carnage, and police brutality protests for the New York Times. Alfiky’s journey took him from studying to be a medical surgeon in Egypt to becoming a photojournalist in America. He talks about his earlier work of documenting the American Muslim experience–from Ramadan to Gun Ownership. They discuss sub-narratives of Alfiky’s visual memories of Egyptian Revolution in 2011, reflected in the experience of photographing the Black Lives Matter protests during the pandemic. Mohaiemen describes Alfiky’s recent works as a moving document, sandwiched between the former Normal and the Pandemic. Among the images Alfiky captured were public health precautions in Manhattan, an empty park in Brooklyn, an economically devastated Bronx area, a presidential election debate in Nashville, a Washington DC inauguration that was met with relief, and finally a new American President getting vaccinated in Delaware.

For more information on their works, please visit Naeem Mohaiemen and Amr Alfiky.

Amr Alfiky
Amr Alfiky is an award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker based in New York City. He is currently a Photographer Fellow with The New York Times. Amr studied medicine at Alexandria University in Egypt and assisted as a field medic during the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Shortly afterwards he began photographing and in 2013 co-founded Janaklees for Visual Arts in Egypt. He moved to the U.S. in 2014 due to the ongoing crackdown on activists and journalists and began documenting the lives of fellow Egyptian immigrants. Amr’s work documenting the Muslim American experience has been featured in The New York Times, Reuters, TIME, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Huffington Post and other major international publications.

Photo credit: Cory Rice

Naeem Mohaiemen
Naeem Mohaiemen makes films, installations and essays about utopia, borders, and families. He is author of Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (Kunsthalle Basel 2014) and Midnight’s Third Child (Nokta, forthcoming); editor of Between Ashes and Hope: Chittagong Hill Tracts in the Blind Spot of Bangladesh Nationalism (Drishtipat, 2010), and co-editor (w/ Lorenzo Fusi) of System Error: War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (Silvana, 2007) and (w/ Eszter Szakacs) of Solidarity Must Be Defended (Tranzit, forthcoming).

Photo credit: Archival