The Photography of Massoud Hossaini

Born in Afghanistan but raised in Iran, photographer Massoud Hossaini brings the critical eye of an outsider and the love of a native son to his photography. The Pulitzer Prize–winner says he found behind the lens both a passion for beauty and a commitment to human rights. See more photos: https://asiafoundation.org/2021/06/09/podcast-the-photography-of-massoud-hossaini/

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Massoud Hossaini (00:00):

... It's so beautiful. And I always wish that Afghanistan reach peace someday, and I can travel those places and record those beauties.

Tracie Yang (00:15):

A Pulitzer Prize-winning lens on a land of sorrow and beauty, this week on InAsia, from The Asia Foundation. I'm Tracy Yang.

John Rieger (00:22):

And I'm John Rieger. Born in Kabul, but raised in Iran during the Soviet occupation, Massoud Hossaini returned to Afghanistan as a young man with a camera, and a hunger to know his native land. His heartbreaking image of a young girl weeping amid the mayhem of a suicide bomb on the Shiite holy day of Ashura won a Pulitzer Prize with Agence France-Presse in 2012.

Tracie Yang (00:43):

More recently, Massoud traveled the country with The Asia Foundation to document our survey of returning refugees. And he was kind enough to join us here, to talk about his art and perhaps some of his life. Massoud Hossaini, welcome to InAsia.

Massoud Hossaini (00:58):

Thank you very much. I say hello to everyone and I'm ready to go ahead.

John Rieger (01:03):

He's ready, Tracy.

Tracie Yang (01:05):

Awesome. So Massoud, how did you get involved in photography? What drew you to the medium?

Massoud Hossaini (01:13):

Well, I grew up in Iran, in Mashhad actually, and after my high school, my father asked me if I can do some work for my own society, for refugees who were living in Mashhad City. So I said yes, and I joined a charity, and then, in 45 minutes driving away from my own house, we reached a place which was completely disaster, and it shocked me really much. Refugees were living in an area which didn't have anything for the normal living. It wasn't any road, power, water, nothing. So then I realized that the hosting community, Iranian, should know about this, that they see it with their own eyes. So I picked my camera and I start documenting the refugees' life inside Mashhad, and then sending those photograph to some reformist Iranian newspapers. And then they helped me to organize a photo exhibition with two other Iranian professional photographers about that area. And I saw that the reaction of people in Tehran was really, really shocked when they saw it, I mean, that refugee camp in Mashhad. It proved me that photography has a lot of power to change people's mind.

John Rieger (02:49):

It sounds like you had a humanitarian and even an activist impulse behind your photographic career, and actually it sounds like you inherited that from your family.

Massoud Hossaini (03:01):

Yeah. I always had this view in my work to be honest. Being impartial as a photojournalist is a must for my job, but reflecting those violation against human rights doesn't make any violation about this impartiality. So then I can also be an activist and that's the way that I use photography as well.

Tracie Yang (03:28):

You worked on the survey of the Afghan returnees with The Asia Foundation. What did you take away from that project, as an Afghan yourself and as a photographer?

Massoud Hossaini (03:38):

Yes. Well, thank you very much, this is a really good topic that I wanted also talk about it, and you asked the question. They asked me to choose two cities to cover their project, and I used Herat and Kandahar, which are so important. Herat is really important for me because I have a lot of cultural roots with those people, and Kandahar, because it's really historical and really important city. For sure that Kandahar is a bit dangerous for going around and walking and with the big camera, but whenever I went to Kandahar before, for AFP or AP, I was inside the Kandahar airfield with the military, with the U.S. military and the other international military, and it was not easy for me to go around the city, but this time it was really nice. I went around the city, I talked to people, and well, it was really nice, because those people also was desperate to see some people from Kabul. War, it make us really separated from each other.

Tracie Yang (04:54):

What was it like going into these people's homes?

Massoud Hossaini (04:57):

None of them actually were opposing taking picture. When I told them that I doing this project for Asia Foundation, and Asia Foundation is this kind of organization, they definitely agreed for that. And I could go inside their houses, I could just take picture of even like women going out and going into their houses. It helped me to understand, to know and to see two big cities of my country much, much better.

John Rieger (05:36):

I'm interested in this aspect of your art. How does going around the city as a photographer affect the way you see the city?

Massoud Hossaini (05:47):

Well, let me tell you this, that when I was six months as a baby, my family fled to Iran, right? So I never seen Afghanistan before, and I would always love to know and see Afghanistan when I was living in Iran. But it never happened, because war was going on, and I was desperately were looking for photos about Afghanistan. So when I entered to Afghanistan and start photography as my main job and my profession, it was also helping me to fulfill that wish. I wanted to know everything about my homeland, to go everywhere. I want to go around Afghanistan, and go to every single village and try to make my own pictures from it, from all Afghanistan.

John Rieger (06:49):

That would be an incredible project.

Tracie Yang (06:50):

Amazing project, yeah.

Massoud Hossaini (06:52):

Yeah. That's what I would love to do, to just have the pictures of Afghanistan, from the mountain, for example, from the villages.

Tracie Yang (07:03):

Is Afghanistan beautiful?

Massoud Hossaini (07:05):

Really much. It's not developed, for sure, it's not like European country or the U.S. or Canada, that everywhere you can go by road or everywhere you go, you have, I mean, power and all technology, but some places are like paradise. Some places I had to only pass by car, unfortunately, because of security or something. And some places I had to be in the helicopters, like with the Marines or with the intelligence service of Afghanistan or whatever, but it's so beautiful. And I always wish that Afghanistan reach peace someday, and I can travel those places and record those beauties.

John Rieger (07:55):

Afghanistan has been at war, in some way or another, for half a century. And yet your view of Afghanistan is filled with love. How do you put that together?

Massoud Hossaini (08:10):

I try to know and learn about Afghanistan through my lens. It is true that I also recorded many violent and many bloody pictures, right, with a lot of violence, but I have covered a lot of other great things about love, about life. One of the events that I covered, it was a concert for teenage girls in a closed area, in a high school, right? So I had this chance to get access into that place, through some of my friends. And then I saw how beautiful Afghan girls are when they're happy.

Tracie Yang (08:57):

That's a lovely image.

Massoud Hossaini (08:58):

Yeah, exactly. And that was several months before the Ashura attack, which my pictures, that picture of mine won Pulitzer Prize.

Tracie Yang (09:08):

Right.

Massoud Hossaini (09:09):

And I got so famous because of that picture, but I also loved those pictures that I took from that concert that I always wanted that people know about that.

Tracie Yang (09:21):

Do you feel like that would change the perspective-

Massoud Hossaini (09:24):

Yes.

Tracie Yang (09:24):

... Of how people view your country?

Massoud Hossaini (09:26):

Yes, exactly. Well, there have been actually war for half a century, and people couldn't go around their own country, they couldn't see their country and they don't know each other. Well, I tried many times to convince, I mean, the forces, the embassies and the funders here, to fund kind of a college of photography with me and young people come from all over Afghanistan to study photography, and they go back to their own city or village, take good shots, and then we make exhibition for all people in Afghanistan. The war is close to Kabul right now, and there are a lot of fear. There are a lot of target killings and all this, but photography can create the idea of peace.

John Rieger (10:27):

Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Massoud Hossaini, thank you for joining us.

Massoud Hossaini (10:32):

Thank you very much for this opportunity.

Tracie Yang (10:34):

And that's our show for this week. You can find a lovely introduction to Massoud's photography in this week's InAsia blog. It's well worth a look.

John Rieger (10:42):

And while you're there, subscribe to the podcast, or just search the introduce for the magic word InAsia. Until next time, I'm John Rieger.

Tracie Yang (10:50):

And I'm Tracy Yang.

John Rieger (10:51):

Thanks for listening.