Muhammad, Ozier
1950-present · Contribution: 1972-2014
Shared the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for Newsday’s “Africa, the Desperate Continent” series documenting famine on the continent, then spent 22 years as a staff photographer for The New York Times covering Nelson Mandela’s inauguration, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Impact on the world
The grandson of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, Muhammad grew up around the civil-rights-era Black press in Chicago and was directly inspired by photographer Gordon Parks, who documented his own family; he began his career at Ebony before moving into mainstream newsrooms, sharing the 1985 Pulitzer Prize with Josh Friedman and Dennis Bell for Newsday’s reporting on African famine, work that also earned him the 1984 George Polk Award for News Photography. As a staff photographer for The New York Times from 1992 to 2014, he documented major historical moments including Mandela’s 1994 election as South Africa’s first Black president and the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and his photojournalism was later featured in the National Gallery of Art’s 2025 exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement.
Life & background
Born in 1950 in Chicago and raised amid Nation of Islam and civil rights community life, Muhammad earned a B.A. in photography from Columbia College Chicago in 1972 and began his career as a staff photographer at Ebony magazine before working at The Charlotte Observer from 1978 to 1980 and Newsday from 1980 to 1992, where he shared the 1985 Pulitzer Prize. He joined The New York Times as a staff photographer in 1992, remaining until 2014, and continues to teach photography workshops for young photographers of color; his son, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, is a historian who has directed the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Sources
- The Pulitzer Prizes; Huck magazine; Keith de Lellis Gallery
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