Motasim, 19 years old, is a Sudanese refugee living in Jordan with a deep passion for photography. Through his camera lens, he captures moments from the lives of the people he meets, telling their stories along the way — using photography as a means of building connections and encouraging people to live together in peace.  

“I took part in a photography workshop, and we were asked to create a project about peace and how to express it through our lenses. I wanted to take a different approach to showcase peace. I wanted to show the journey to peace, especially for refugees. I think that we as refugees, have lost our homes and in a way we lost our peace. So now we are trying to regain our peace.” 

“I do want to show people how unique refugees are because some people underestimate how different and how unique and then how special refugees are.” 

Through his photos he told the stories of two of his friends, Viviane and Amineh, capturing how they found peace in their lives. “Amineh mainly finds peace through books. She loves to read and she loves to write. So I wanted to show how she likes to read. While, Viviane is different because she has many different stories, she’s a sister, a daughter, a friend, and at the same time a teacher. She also experienced the invasion of Iraq by ISIS. So she has that dark side inside of her. And at the same time, she has this light side that she wants to give to the world.”

Reflecting on his work, Motasim believes that “we can build peace by spreading love, which is I think is one of the important things that we can do to make our community rise and become better and more united.”  

He tries to do this through his photography. Motasim shared the stories of Amineh from Yemen and Viviane from Iraq at the International Day of Peace 2023 exhibition in Amman, co-hosted by JRS Jordan.