Pulitzer Prize-winning conflict photographer Moises Saman gives a talk at MIT
Saman discusses coverage of the wars in Syria and Sudan
Vivian Hir–The Tech
On Monday, Oct. 27, Pulitzer Prize-winning conflict photographer Moises Saman gave a talk at MIT about his coverage of the wars in Syria and Sudan. Organized by the MIT Center for International Studies, MIT-Africa, and MIT-MENA, the event featured Associate Professor of Political Science Mai Hassan introducing Saman and moderating the Q&A at the end.
Saman has covered the Middle East for more than two decades, starting with the Iraq War and the Arab Spring. His photography has been featured in many publications, including The New Yorker and The New York Times. In 2025, Saman won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his powerful black and white images of the Sednaya prison in Syria, where prisoners were tortured and killed under the Assad regime during the Syrian civil war. He was also part of the team that received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for their investigative coverage of the Sudanese civil war.
Saman began the talk by sharing his goal as a photojournalist: to “highlight moments of humanity and dignity” in places with war and conflict, since these aspects tend to be overlooked and are not mentioned in news headlines. Saman argued that the purpose of photography is not only to “bear witness,” but also to consider how history is portrayed, remembered, or even “erased.”
Then, Saman presented a slideshow of haunting photos he took when covering the wars in Syria and Sudan, which deeply affected the audience. From the rubbles of Aleppo to a mom grieving her son who died in the war, the photos depicted the humanitarian impact of the wars.
Saman extensively covered the Syrian civil war from the revolution protests in 2011 to the development of ISIS in 2014 to the fall of the Assad regime in 2024. When recalling his first assignment in Syria in 2011, Saman shared that seeing the protests against Bashar Al Assad’s regime in the city of Hama felt as though “there was a rare sense of possibility [of revolution] back then.” However, the regime violently cracked down on the protests, eventually leading to the civil war.
“What had begun as a popular uprising became fragmented, with foreign funding and arming different fractions, turning the war into a battlefield of competing agendas,” Saman said. While the war’s destruction, particularly of Aleppo, strongly impacted Saman, he was also struck by how civilians tried to “maintain a sense of continuity,” such as by sending their children to schools in basements.
Around 2016, Saman shifted his focus to the Syrian refugee crisis because of the increased danger for journalists in Syria given ISIS’s control of parts of Syria at the time. Saman described the Zaatari Jordan refugee camp as an urban hub where families attempted to “bring a sense of home to a place meant to be transient.” Besides refugee camps, Saman also documented the lives of urban refugees in cities like Amman and others who embarked on difficult journeys to Europe. These experiences provided Saman a glimpse of the war’s impact on refugees, stating that they “carried war with them into exile.”
After spending over a decade reporting on the Syrian civil war, Saman left for Damascus in December 2024 to cover the sudden collapse of the Assad regime. Pointing to one of his photos of a crowd’s shock and fear, Saman recounted that he could “feel the tension in the air,” as people were uncertain about the country’s future. Saman later presented the harrowing photos of Sednaya prison that won the Pulitzer Prize, describing the prison as a place not only for “physical confinement, but [also] the deliberate erasure of entire lives.”
Saman then transitioned to his recent work in Sudan, stating that the theme of “unresolved grief” in Syria was also present in Sudan. In January 2024, Saman went to Sudan for the first time to cover the conflict in the Nuba mountains, a region near the border with South Sudan. Although the two main national armed groups are the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, the primary group that controls the Nuba mountains is the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement North.
This trip made Saman realize how culture was a key part of the conflict in the Nuba mountains. According to Saman, the Nuba people come from over 50 African ethnic groups, speak dozens of languages, and practice different religions. Despite these differences, their Nuba identity was based on their shared geography and as such, they coexisted peacefully. However, that identity has now become political, disrupting the peoples’ geographical bond. Saman argued that the Sudanese civil war is not only about the conflict in Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan, but also about the challenges that individuals across Sudan experience. “It is about identity as well, the insistence of the Nuba to remain themselves, even as bombs fall and hunger spreads,” Saman said.
When Saman returned to the Nuba mountains again in 2024, he saw the toll of the war on the area. People from other affected areas came to Nuba — a region already with little food and resources — further straining the region. Saman showed many photos that demonstrated the conflict’s devastation, from people gathering bush leaves for food to a teenager with tears trickling down his face. “War doesn’t only kill with bombs and bullets,” Saman said. “It kills slowly by starvation and neglect.”
In 2025, Saman went back to Sudan for the third time, but this time to the Darfur and Sudanese refugee camps in neighboring Chad. On this trip, Saman documented the humanitarian consequences of the war, capturing images such as a mom waiting in line for water and a malnourished toddler lying on the hospital bed. Saman stated that the individuals he met were not “isolated tragedies,” but rather part of a crisis that has displaced millions of people.
Before he finished his presentation, Saman emphasized that photography is not just about taking pictures, but also about “recognizing the humanity in every story.” He stressed that the “responsibility to remember” is not solely for journalists, but rather a collective one that should be carried by everyone in the audience.
“To remember is an act of resistance against erasure and to document is to ensure that these lives, these stories are seen,” Saman said.