Gulshan Khan is an independent South African photographer based in Johannesburg. Her work is focused on stories related to social justice and social identity constructs. She tackles issues such as identity, transition and the belonging and dignity of people; the multi-layered effects of everything from access to water and sanitation to access to safe housing, and from equal education and healthcare to gender based violence and plastic pollution, climate change and migration. These are themes which continue to feed her work as a reflection of the human condition and the world around her. She worked as a stringer for Agence France Presse (AFP), and was the first African woman to be hired by the agency in 2017. She has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, New Frame, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Le Monde, The Financial Times, El Pais, The Wall Street Journal, among others. Gulshan has worked with various NGO’s including the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the African Women's Development Fund. In 2018, she was one of six photographers selected for the World Press Photo 6x6 Talent Program, Africa Edition, and was a Joop Swart Nominee (2019). In 2016, Gulshan completed the Market Photo Workshop Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Program in Johannesburg. She is a National Geographic Explorer, and a member of the World Press Photo's African Photojournalism Database (APJD) and Native and Women Photograph and is an Everyday Africa contributor. She has presented work and spoken at the World Press Photo Festival 2019, The National Geographic Storytellers Summit 2020 and regularly teaches and critiques students work at her former alumnus, the Market Photo Workshop. While working on multiple projects, Gulshan has been developing a long term project about her own community of contemporary Muslims in South Africa. This personal documentation aims to engage with ideas of the replication of origins, the (re)establishment of communities and the transformations of physical, political and social landscapes through faith, with a special interest in the perspective of women and aims to be something that generations to come can look upon as a source of history and memory.

The things we carry with us

The things we carry with us This ongoing personal project is the beginning of a documentation of my own community of South Africans of the Muslim faith. The goal is to present their point of view, including the women, whose experiences and presence are not always acknowledged. By portraying the prayer, the seeking and the hope which is profound and shared by all. Stemming from a community that has experienced apartheid and the legacy of colonialism, there is limited visual documentation of communities that were not part of the dominant culture or narrative. With this project, I hope to create something that generations to come can look upon as an archive of history and memory. Islam was brought to Southern Africa on a slave ship bound for the seaside city of Cape Town, the first Qu’ran being ‘carried’ and written entirely from memory. While allowed, the religion was practiced with difficulty as muslims suffered from the oppressions of colonialism, slavery, white minority rule and the apartheid regime. Since then, and with recent global geo-politics, forced and voluntary migrations, it has flourished with every Muslim person who came to South Africa, on journeys of heartache or fear, sometimes excitement; holding onto prayers. There is something to be said about this intangible phenomenon and its people, and the threads which bind them together. Faith is one of these threads that reach from the depths of the soul to the frontiers of the physical, the individual to the communal. Faith lengthens and transcends borders and is a force which keeps people together, (re)creates and shapes communities as they attempt to re-establish home in a new place. It has many influences and diverse ways of cultural practice and accents. The practices are often a replication of origins or an amalgamation of a home left behind and a new land that sometimes dictates an adjusted way of observance and worship. South Africa is a developing country and has become a haven or a last hope for those who have chosen to leave or who have lost their homes; for many, prayer and observance, together and in solitude and to become the embodiment of “connectedness”, “rootedness” and reminiscence.