Munira Ahmed, a 32-year-old travel photographer from Queens, may look familiar as she has become the “face of resistance” to the Trump administration. Shepard Fairey, best known for his “Barack Obama Hope” poster, used Ms. Ahmed’s image, featuring it in his ‘We the People’ series. Posters were distributed at last weekend’s Women’s March in various cities.
Mr. Fairey based the poster on an older photograph of Ms. Ahmed, shot by New York photographer Ridwan Adhami. Taken ten years ago, the location for the photo was Ground Zero to “make a strong statement,” according to the photographer, adding (and) “to heighten the sense of: ‘We’re here, we’re Muslim, we are New Yorkers and we belong here.’”
“The photo has had second and third lives,” says Ms. Ahmed. “It went viral before viral was really a thing when it was posted on Muslim blogs by people thinking it was kinda cool. Now it’s getting a third life that’s way bigger than it ever was previously.”
According to the Guardian, “Fairey’s portrait and Adhami’s photograph pose the same question: what does it mean to be Muslim and American when the US is engaged in conflicts in many Muslim countries?”
Read instead about fighting anti-Muslim posters here!
