Mr. Muhammad has circled the globe many times to cover stories in some of the most perilous places on earth for publications such as Ebony Magazine, The Charlotte Observer, Newsday and, for the last 17 years, The New York Times. His work has taken him across America, to Africa, the Middle East and the Far East, and he has covered such stories Nelson Mandela's election as president of South Africa, investigated an alleged al Qaeda training camp in central Somalia and traveled to Afghanistan just after the fall of the Taliban. A year later he was embedded with the Marines when the war in Iraq began. In 1985 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting with Josh Friedman and Dennis Bell for a series of reports titled "Africa, the Desperate Continent."
"It's a very dangerous occupation but I enjoy being on the front line of history," Mr. Muhammad said this week from his home in Harlem. "My friends have sometimes said, 'Why would you want to put yourself through such hardship?' Oftentimes it can be very difficult finding creature comforts, even finding a good night's sleep. My answer often has been, 'I didn't get into this work to bury my work in the back section of the newspaper.' Any journalist would want to be in on a big story."
Mr. Muhammad will share images from one of those big stories, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, in an exhibition at the Tremaine Gallery at The Hotchkiss School in Salisbury from Oct. 24 through Dec. 11. There will be a meet-the-artist reception Oct. 24 from 4 to 6 p.m.
"My work in New Orleans in 2005 started about a week after the levees breached in the Gulf of Mexico," he said. "The New York Times sent large groups into Baton Rouge and then we drove into the New Orleans area. I returned to New Orleans half a dozen times over the course of one year, one time with [then] Senator [Barack] Obama, and, to say the least, it was a hardship experience. The city was just not functioning."
Initially, he photographed the National Guard's efforts to get people to leave the ravaged city, and later he was there during the short window of opportunity residents had to return to retrieve personal possessions. "I covered the efforts to make sure that all [human] remains had been found, the animal rescues and then relief efforts for those returning after the waters receded. Coincidentally, it was the expiration of mayor's term in office and he was running for re-election, so there was a lot to do to cover the election. Then I shot the first post-Katrina Mardi Gras, the first jazz festival and a lot of second-line activities. The paper I worked for poured a lot of resources into keeping reporters and me as a photographer in that area."
The photographs he made show the grim reality of Katrina: tight, pained faces, devastated homes, empty neighborhoods. One of the images to be displayed in Salisbury shows August Blanchard and his Aunt Sally in the Lower 9th Ward home of Charlene Blanchard, who died under an overturned sofa, while in another Teresa Ogden is shown in front of her home, a FEMA trailer in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans.
Mr. Muhammad said his interest in photojournalism developed early in his life, when he was a teenager in Chicago. "My Uncle Herbert was a studio photographer and fledgling staff photographer who later turned into a boxing manager," he related. "He managed Muhammad Ali, and through that link I had the chance to observe and meet [groundbreaking American photojournalist] Gordon Parks. He spent about a year with Ali and I began to pay attention. By the time I was in high school, I knew I would be a photographer."
He attended Columbia College in Chicago, which had a good film department for both motion and still photography. "Columbia brought in really stellar documentary photographers," he recalled with appreciation.
His instructors, reviewing his portfolio, encouraged him to talk to publishers in the Chicago area. "I landed my first gig with Johnson Publications, which produced Ebony," he said. "They gave me the opportunity to travel to Africa in the late 70s to cover such events as the Sixth Pan African Congress and the Second World Festival of African Arts and Crafts. I had a start that really required me to get out and look at the world," he said.
His nearly four decades of pursuing stories internationally have shown him the best and worst of human behavior, but he says his favorite assignment was covering the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994. "That was the most inspiring story," he said. "I was in South Africa for two months following Mandela around. It was extremely inspiring to the see the optimism of the Zulu people and some of the tribes and their learning how to cast a vote, use a ballot-it was just amazing."
Of late he has been following another historic election, this time in his own country. "The Times has been flooding the zone in Washington in covering the Obama administration and the legislation he is putting through," he said, "so I have not been traveling [abroad] as much."
Mr. Muhammad has seen great changes in photojournalism since he entered the field in 1972. "The first few decades in photography required film," he said, "while the last decade has been digitized. It's a different world. I remember covering assignments around the world for Ebony and Newsday. I would take the pictures, put the film in lead bags to protect it from X-rays and ship it back. Many of my assignments then didn't require a stringent deadline and had been planned well in advance to be published later, long after the pictures were taken. With the digital world, deadlines have shrunk and competition has heightened. I practically have to file photographs moments after they have been taken."
He said he does not look back with nostalgia and embraces the new technology. "I am grateful to still be practicing my craft at this time of life and to have the opportunity to share in this wonderful, exciting world of the Web and digitalization," he said.
Mr. Muhammad's works can be viewed at the Tremaine Gallery Monday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday, from noon to 4 p.m. The gallery will be closed Nov. 25 to 27 for the Thanksgiving holiday. For more information, see the Web site at www.hotchkiss.org.