OZIER MUHAMMAD FORMER STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER THE NEW YORK TIMES
Ozier Muhammad graduated with a B.A., in photography from Columbia College in Chicago. He has been a photojournalist for more than 3 decades. His first job was as a staff photographer at Ebony Magazine. Ozier joined The Charlotte Observer in 1978, went to Newsday in 1980 and has been at the New York Times since 1992.
Ozier has covered Africa since 1974. First for Ebony, going to Dar Es Salaam for the Sixth Pan African Congress, and in 1977 to Lagos Nigeria for the 2nd World Festival of African Arts and Crafts, FESTAC. Other locations for Newsday were: Ivory Coast, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Kenya. For The Times: the first non-racial election in South Africa, in which Nelson Mandela became president. Ozier has also covered stories in Guinee (Amadou Diallo’s funeral), the presidential election in Nigeria in 1999, and an alleged al Qaeda training camp in central Somalia in 2001. Ozier was in Afghanistan just after the fall of the Taliban and a year later was embedded with the Marines when the war in Iraq began. In addition, Ozier has also covered Times stories in Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Congo, and Morocco. Ozier went to New Orleans immediately after the hurricane Katrina evacuation effort began. More recently, Ozier spent several months traveling with then U.S. Senator Barack Obama during his presidential camapaign and the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti.
Ozier was born in Chicago and lives in Harlem. He’s married and has two children.