MOISES SAMAN: “THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNEY – ETHICS, STORYTELLING, AND CRAFT IN DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY”
NOVEMBER 18-22, 2026
PALMA DE MALLORCA, SPAIN

MONDAY, JULY 6 EARLY BIRD APPLICATIONS DEADLINE

MOISES SAMAN: “THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNEY – ETHICS, STORYTELLING, AND CRAFT IN DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY”
NOVEMBER 18-22, 2026, PALMA DE MALLORCA, SPAIN

“Photography has been my way of searching for truth, connection, and belonging in a world that often feels devoid of them. That search began with my own story, shaped by the realization that the world my father built for our family was founded on deception, and by a need to find something more honest.
After many false starts, that search carried me from Spain to the frontlines as a conflict photographer. Over more than two decades, my work has evolved from chasing the spectacle of war to questioning the narratives we construct around it. This workshop grows out of that journey and the lessons I have learned along the way about seeing, bearing witness, and trying to make photographs that matter.

But this workshop is not really about my story. It is about the questions that each of us brings to photography and the reasons we continue to return to it. We all arrive with our own histories, experiences, assumptions, and ways of looking at the world. Photography is not simply a matter of pointing a camera at something interesting. It is shaped by who we are, what we care about, and what we choose to pay attention to.

Over five days, we will explore how our personal histories influence the work we make and how greater self-awareness can lead to more honest and meaningful storytelling. This will not be a one-way lecture or a workshop focused on a particular style or formula. Instead, it will be an ongoing conversation. Through discussions, shooting assignments, editing sessions, and critiques, we will learn from one another while building a temporary community rooted in trust, curiosity, and respect.

We will talk openly about the challenges that come with this craft: uncertainty, self-doubt, ethical dilemmas, creative blocks, and the difficulty of sustaining a long-term practice. Too often photographers confront these questions alone. My hope is to create an environment where participants feel comfortable sharing both their successes and their struggles, and where honest feedback helps push the work forward.

Each day will focus on a different aspect of the photographic journey and will be grounded in practical shooting exercises. We will begin by looking closely at how photographs function within larger narratives and how composition, light, timing, and sequencing shape meaning. From there, we will examine the ethics of bearing witness, drawing on examples from my own experience working in conflict zones and communities affected by crisis. We will also discuss long-form documentary practice, the realities of sustaining projects over many years, and the challenge of balancing journalism, personal vision, and the changing demands of the photographic industry.

Participants are encouraged to bring an ongoing or future project to develop throughout the workshop. Through individual and group critiques, we will look not only at the photographs themselves but also at the intentions behind them. What story are you trying to tell? Why does it matter to you? What assumptions are you bringing to it? How can the work move beyond description and toward something more lasting? These are some of the questions we will explore together.

For me, photography has always been a search—for understanding, for connection, and for a way to make sense of a complicated world. Whether working in a war zone or in the quieter spaces of everyday life, I have found myself drawn to the same questions again and again. This workshop is an opportunity to engage with those questions alongside others who are equally committed to the craft. My hope is that participants leave not only with stronger work, but with a deeper understanding of their own motivations, a clearer sense of direction, and new relationships that continue long after the workshop ends.”

– Moises Saman

All photographs © Moises Saman. Courtesy the artist. Top banner: A woman awaiting medical treatment at an NGO-operated hospital in the Nuba Mountains. Sudan, 2024.

ABOUT MOISES SAMAN:

Moises Saman is a documentary photographer and a member of Magnum Photos, currently based in Amman, Jordan. He began his career as an intern at Newsday in New York and became a staff photographer from 2000 to 2007. The attacks of September 11, 2001—just one year into his tenure—fundamentally altered his trajectory, sending him first to Afghanistan and soon after to Iraq, and drawing him into the global coverage of the conflicts that followed. Trained within a traditional journalistic framework, Saman gradually moved toward a more expansive and reflective approach, focused on the long-term human consequences of war. Over the past two decades, his work has been deeply rooted in the Middle East, documenting some of the region’s most transformative and turbulent moments. His coverage spans the aftermath of 9/11, the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Arab Spring uprisings, the rise of ISIS, and the fall of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. While often working in active conflict zones, his photography extends beyond the frontlines to examine civilian life, memory, displacement, and the enduring effects of violence long after global attention has moved on. Saman’s work has received numerous awards and grants, including the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography (2025), the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting (2025, as part of a team), a Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography (2015), the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund (2014), the Henri Nannen Preis (2014), multiple World Press Photo awards, and Pictures of the Year International honors. He is a regular contributor to National Geographic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and TIME, among other international publications. His first monograph, Discordia (2016), produced in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, reflects the fragmented and unresolved nature of revolution. His most recent book, Glad Tidings of Benevolence (2023), revisits two decades of war in Iraq, layering photographs with military dispatches, transcripts, and lists of the dead to interrogate the distance between official narratives and lived experience.

@moisessaman

Bottom banner: © Moises Saman: Sednaya, north of Damascus, is one of the most notorious detention facilities in the world. Syria. 2024.

MOISES SAMAN
PALMA DE MALLORCA, SPAIN
11.18-22, 2026