Salim Khan

Mohammed Salim Khan (Bangladesh) is an award-winning Rohingya photographer, visual storyteller and community volunteer living in the Kutupalong refugee settlement in Cox’s Bazar. Having grown up as a refugee after his parents fled Myanmar in the early 1990s, Salim uses photography to document the daily realities, resilience, culture and humanity of the Rohingya people from the perspective of someone living within the community.

Salim began documenting life around him with a mobile phone before moving to digital cameras. For him, photography is more than creating images: it is a way of preserving the history of his people and helping the wider world understand the challenges they have faced for generations. His work covers difficult stories of displacement, fires, floods, limited access to education and healthcare, as well as moments of family life, tradition, celebration and hope. His photographs have been published internationally and shown in exhibitions around the world.

In 2023, Salim was one of four Rohingya storytellers from Bangladesh to receive the UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award for Asia and the Pacific. Together with Abdullah Habib, Sahat Zia and Shahida Win, he was recognized for using photography, poetry and storytelling to document the experiences of displaced Rohingya people and bring their voices to an international audience. For Salim, the greatest importance of the award was not the personal recognition, but that more people would learn who the Rohingya are and understand the lives and challenges of his community.

Alongside his photography, Salim works as a volunteer fire- and flood-safety trainer, helping prepare community volunteers to respond during emergencies. He also hopes to teach photography and documentary storytelling to young Rohingya men and women, giving them the skills and tools to record events in their communities and tell their own stories in their own voices.

As a father of three daughters, Salim dreams of a future in which his children and all Rohingya people can live with dignity, opportunity and the freedom to pursue their ambitions. Through his photography, he continues to amplify the voices of his community while holding on to the belief that greater understanding can lead to meaningful change.