Mohamed Amin (1943 – 1996) was a Kenyan film maker, author, journalist and photographer. Born in Nairobi, the son of a Punjabi immigrant, Amin became entranced by photography at an early age and had his first pictures published in a national newspaper when he was still at school in Tanganyika. 

Long acknowledged as Africa's greatest photographer-cameraman, Mohamed Amin photographed and filmed the major events of Africa, Asia and the Middle East for more than thirty years. His life was cut tragically short when, in November 1996, hijackers took over an Ethiopian airliner on which he was travelling, forcing it to crash in the Indian Ocean.

In 1984, as a Reuters cameraman, Amin worked with Michael Buerk to report on the Ethiopian famine. In a reflection on Amin’s life, Buerk wrote:

“He was a good cameraman, gifted, with a still photographer's eye for the telling close up. In the worst situations - when it was very dangerous, or when some huge tragedy threatened to drown emotion, feeling, judgement - he was a great cameraman, one of the very best. In the highlands of Ethiopia in 1984, in the midst of the great famine, he worked with a ruthless compassion - emotionally engaged, but professionally detached. We didn't speak much - I don't know what we could have said to each other that would have been adequate. We gathered pictures and information, each did our best to tell that story to hundreds of millions of people, rather than waste the intensity of our feelings on each other.” [Quote from http://www.rorypecktrust.org/award97/buerk.htm]

back to the gallery ...