Khadija Farah: The Kenyan photographer turning overlooked lives into powerful stories

Farah did not enter photography through a conventional journalism school.

She was working as a social worker in Dadaab refugee complex when she began photographing the lives around her.

In a 2017 interview, she said she had always known storytelling was the career she wanted, but her time in Dadaab gave her the push to pursue it.

Photography soon became a full-time career.

That beginning still makes sense when you look at her work today.

Her photographs tend to stay close to people whose stories are easy to reduce to statistics:

Refugees, women, pastoralists, migrants, workers and communities living through environmental change.

She photographs the climate through people

Farah's work on climate change is rarely just about dried rivers, cracked earth or disappearing landscapes.

In Wajir, for example, she photographed families dealing with the loss of livestock during the devastating drought in northern Kenya.

Oxfam's documentation from the crisis uses her images to show pastoralists standing among dead animals and communities dealing with food insecurity and lost livelihoods.

She has also photographed women seaweed farmers in Zanzibar, documenting how climate change is affecting their livelihoods.

Farah has said she is interested in the everyday consequences of environmental problems, particularly stories that can make complicated issues more accessible to audiences.

TIME featured her photographs in a report on environmental crises forcing people into cities, including images of families around Lake Baringo dealing with the consequences of environmental change.

Migration keeps appearing in her work

Her background in Dadaab naturally connects with another recurring subject: movement.

She has photographed refugees and migrants for outlets including The Washington Post, TIME and Der Spiegel.

Her photographs have appeared in reporting on refugees waiting for resettlement, Kenyan workers seeking opportunities abroad and migration between Africa and Europe.

One recent Der Spiegel assignment followed Kenyan workers preparing for employment in Germany, with Farah photographing aspiring nurses, vocational students and others navigating the promise - and uncertainty - of international labor migration.

Her subjects are bigger than the crisis

This may be the most distinctive thing about Farah's photography.

Her portfolio stretches beyond humanitarian reporting into religious festivals, food, culture, conservation and ethical travel.

She has photographed Hajj pilgrims in Mecca, and her work has also appeared in stories about Kenya's wildlife, communities and cultural traditions.

For the cookbook In Bibi's Kitchen, Farah travelled across eight African countries photographing grandmothers whose recipes and memories became part of a wider story about food, family, migration, war and refuge.

That project captures another side of her work:

Sometimes the photograph does not need to document a disaster. A kitchen can carry history too.

Her byline travels far

Farah's photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, TIME, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, CNN and other international publications, according to her professional biography.

Her portfolio includes work for organisations such as Oxfam, ActionAid and WHO, taking her into subjects ranging from climate justice and health to displacement and human rights.

She has also photographed stories about Nairobi's digital workforce and the struggles of Kenyan content moderators, showing that her interests can move from remote drought-affected communities to the city's technology economy.

A photographer who chose her own route

Farah became part of the inaugural Women Photograph mentorship programme in 2017, was included in the 2020 Lit List by Authority Collective, Women Photograph and Diversify Photo, and is listed in World Press Photo's African Photojournalism Database.

She is also a member of Inland Stories, an international cooperative of long-term documentary photographers.

Her career has consequently grown without losing the quality that appeared in those early Dadaab photographs:

Curiosity about ordinary people and what their surroundings reveal about much larger forces.

Farah once described her interest as moving beyond the familiar “Africa rising” and “Africa falling” narratives to document the everyday.

That may be the simplest way to understand her work.