Photographer Younes Mohammad

Please be aware, some images in this article may be graphic or sensitive for younger viewers.

Who are you?

I became a refugee when I was just 4 years old and for 24 years I spent my life as a refugee in a small town near the Iran-Afghanistan border. I grew up in a difficult situation with a poor family, when I was just 14 years old I had to leave school and start working as a daily worker while trying to continue my study at night school.

I tried to manage my family life and my personal dreams, and later went to the University of Tehran graduating from business management. 

All my life I had a dream to have a camera and take pictures but no chance, I had to ignore that dream and just work for my family’s daily needs. The only thing that I could do at that time, was find photography books, go through it and see the images. It was powerful and full of temptation but it was not mine, I kept those books as my most valuable and worthy possession that I had.

Towards the end of 2011, when I was around forty years old, I was feeling tired of life, finding no joy at all, and always working - I wasn’t happy. Even though I was a well-paid General Manager of a construction company, I decided one day to leave my job and start following my dream. I handed in my resignation, bought a camera, and started to live life in a new way.  I am still on this highway today, trying to make up for the lost time.  

Now I am a freelance photographer and I live in Erbil Iraqi Kurdistan and besides working for some photo agencies, Iam doing my personal projects.

“Brahim” [Winning Work]

By Younes Mohammad

Photography

What inspired you to practice photography?

I don’t remember the first images that affected me but I know my father had an album with some old pictures of him, my mother, myself and my sisters. Additionally there were some other pictures that showed how beautiful Kurdistan, the place we had just fled because of war, was. My mom, though, was so beautiful at those pictures and my father, with his gun seemed to me like a hero and now, my mom is tired of the refugee's life and my father is a simple worker working for days just for some food. That album spoke to me and it is the most powerful memory that exists and is able to speak to me.

The beauty and power inside those photos were able to keep me up for hours thinking about different the elements, locations, feelings, and enjoyment, but later I discovered that it worked for me as a language as well and I can tell what I want to say through it, to everyone.

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“Eskandar”

By Younes Mohammad

Photography

Brahim is part of a larger series, can you tell me about the series itself, your journey to start it, as well as the process of doing it?

When in August 2014, ISIS attacked Iraqi Kurdistan, as a Photojournalist I started to cover every day of the war, mostly at the front lines. At the end of the war, I was diagnosed with PTSD and it took two years off my life for treatment, to begin to feel better and become a more normal person. After this, I asked myself I was there just as a reporter, what happened for the Peshmerga as they had a more difficult experience? To answer this question I started to find the people who had been fighting and got wounded at the battles and listening to their stories.

I decided to use a black fabric background to put more focus on them not anything else and I decided also to do it in each of their homes with the natural light that exists at their home and the light was very big challenge for me. 

"Brahim" is part of my long-term project (Open Wounds) documenting the sacrifices of Kurdish Peshmerga in the fight to eradicate ISIS. 

The project has taken me to the provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan. Speaking with several hundred Peshmerga, taking intimate portraits of the wounded fighters, their families, and documenting both the stories in the battle and their ongoing struggles to navigate post-conflict life. 

All most all of the men showed severe physical injury. Arms, legs, and eyes lost. Bodies so riddled with bullet and shrapnel wounds that simple movement created wincing pain. These men also showed the signs of the heavy burdens of the mental traumas, PTSD, and of memories that would not leave them. Despite all they suffered, they often said they would go back to the fight again if ever called. They would do this for their children, their families, their people, and for the wider world.

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“Hazhar & Sheler”

By Younes Mohammad

Photography

Can you tull us about the person behind ‘Brahim’?

He is a very simple and normal person with a lot of pain for the future of his kids. He is brave and fearless with high self confidence and at the same time, beautiful and lovely.

Can you explain why you choose photography as a medium for your work and voice as opposed to others?

I started with writing poetry and then short stories, but I soon realised that my audiences were very limited and for people to understand me they would need to know my language and they would need to like that medium that I was using to tell my point of view. Additionally, if you translated to another language, it would lose its ability to send the intended message.

Then I found the power of photographs, especially the documentary style, it's more than an international language and beyond the cultures, it's like a kid’s language, direct and intimate, clear and expressive.

I believe each medium has a limitation but some are more capable of telling real humans feeling. I chose photography because on one side it's a part of the real-world and on the another side you can make it in an artistic way but artwork alone is not that real it can be just born from an artist's mind even if you make a real creature.

When work is more realistic people will take it more seriously but when it's trying to be realistic people will maybe think about it and dream of it, but I push myself to both think and act for now not the future, we have to show what is wrong now and what needs to change now, 

I am looking for better now and photography has the power to do that.

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Hawar

By Younes Mohammad

Photography

What projects are you working on currently? Can you discuss them?

From the end of 2019, I started the "Open Wounds" project which "Brahim" is just one of the images from the project, I hope to finish the project this year and then publish it as a book.

Last year during the process of this project I documented the daily life of people during the quarantine period in Erbil capital of Iraqi Kurdistan as well and now I am planning to do another project about diseases and special health issues, which we have a high rate of , especially in the children.

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“Mustafa”

By Younes Mohammad

Photography

Lastly, I like to ask everyone what advice they would give to their fellow artists/photographers, what is your advice?

I have no advice, but my suggestion is just to find yourself and be that and try to follow your dream. We already have Picasso, Dali, and Nachtwey, but we don’t have you, your voice, your path, and your point of view. Be yourself, we need you, as you are

To view more of Younes Mohammad’s work :

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