"The Dreams of Fatema" was a feature and cover story in the University of Maryland's Terp magazine. The story is about a student who was driven from Afghanistan by extremism; she landed at the University of Maryland to study journalism and prepare to reclaim her homeland. Fatema Hosseini is shown in front of a projected image of Afghans lining up to board a military jet to evacuate the capital, Kabul, as the country fell to the Taliban in August 2021. Hosseini escaped in similar fashion from the same airport. Fatema struggled with her situation, and we needed to be very sensitive and take great care to conceptualize and execute her portraits for this very traumatic experience. We wanted the images to be introspective and compelling, and I chose to use image projection to place her at the different scenes where her challenging and life threatening story took place.
From the Judges
Powerful photos that work really well on the page. Some of us felt they were a bit repetitive, particularly the third image, but the concept was strong and the portraits themselves quite beautiful.
