NEW YORK—Peering at gushing lava from a helicopter high over Mount Kilauea, Khalil Muhammad, at age 15, stuck his hand out to snap a photo.
The volcanic eruption was an unexpected change in Muhammad’s itinerary, on his family vacation in Hawaii, 1987. But that’s what holidays were like for the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, Ozier Muhammad.
Muhammad learned much more from his father than how to photograph extraordinary views. He attributes a large part of his success to the events and literature he was exposed to as a child.
His father raised him in an environment surrounded by books. From a young age, Muhammad was influenced by authors such as Graham Greene, a moral–political activist; Alan Paton, an anti-apartheid activist; and Eugene Genovese, one of the first historians who looked at slavery from the perspectives of the enslaved.
His father won a Pulitzer Prize for his photos of the Ethiopian famine in 1985.
Ozier Muhammad captured the images of haggard children, lines of women waiting for food at a dislocation camp, and a man pleading to get help for his dying wife as their child sat quietly in the background.
