As part of the Amman Image Festival, Spanish-Peruvian photographer Moises Saman will share with the local audience his experiences and the challenges and difficulties he faced during his career as a photojournalist.
Moisés Saman was born in Lima (Peru) in 1974, into a family of Spaniards and Peruvians. At the age of one, his family moved to Barcelona, where Moisés spent his childhood and most of his youth.
He studied Communications and Sociology at the California State University, graduating in 1998. It was during his senior year of college that Moises decided on a career as a photojournalist, influenced by his studies in visual sociology and his photographic coverage of the war in the Balkans.
After interning at several American newspapers, he joined the New York Newsday in 2000 as a staff photographer, a position he held until 2007. During his 7 years at Newsday, his work focused on covering the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and he spent most of his time traveling between Afghanistan, Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries.
In the fall of 2007, Moises left Newsday to become a freelance photographer for The New York Times, although he also began contributing regularly to Human Rights Watch, Newsweek and TIME Magazine, among other international publications.
In 2010, Magnum Photos invited Moises to join the prestigious agency as a nominee and he became a full member in 2014. In 2015 he was a Guggenheim Foundation fellow in photography thanks to his work on the Arab Spring, which culminated in the publication of the book Discodia.
His latest book, Glad Tidings of Benevolence, the culmination of over 20 years working in Iraq, was published in March 2023. After living in New York, Tokyo, Cairo and Barcelona, Moses and his family now live in Amman, Jordan.
