Instagram is 10 years old! A Pulitzer Prize winner explains how it helped his career

Muhammed Muheisen surrounded by Afghan refugee children while explaining to them how the camera works, on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan. (Image credit: Muhammed Muheisen, Canon Ambassador and photojournalist)

Believe it or not, Instagram is officially 10 years old! The increasingly important social media platform launched for iOS on 06 October 2010 (with an Android version following in April 2012).

I’ve been a professional photographer since 2000 and have documented almost every major event in the world since. In 2014, I created my own Instagram account, @mmuheisen, without any expectations – but within a few months I had almost 100,000 followers. That is when it hit me how important the platform is. In a second, I could share exactly what I was seeing straight from the scene to people’s screens. From that moment I knew that I wanted to use my platform to make a difference.

Using @EverydayRefugees I started sharing pictures of what was happening around me during the refugee crisis. Using Canon’s 5D series I could be discreet, helping to capture the events raw and authentically, and within seconds I could then send my pictures to thousands of people. This inspired me to establish the Everyday Refugees Foundation in 2015. People started to react. We then started getting donations. People wanted to volunteer and big companies asked how to help.

Instagram is the main platform we use to inform the world about what’s happening around us. We share untold stories that show the challenges, hopes and resilience refugees face in everyday life. We do this by sharing a picture a day – that’s seven untold stories in a week and thirty in a month. We have a big focus on consistency. By continually sharing these new photos and accounts with the world, we can continue to raise awareness and drive change. For us, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

As a photographer I embraced the challenge of social media – it was unavoidable, but as I wanted to make a difference when using it this encouraged me to think outside the box. No longer was I only communicating with those in the industry, but I could open my photography up to everyone – the teacher, the student, the actress and the politician. I adapted to ensure I could communicate the stories my photography told with everybody, at every level of society. But social media moves incredibly fast, like a train, so to remain creative and relevant you have to be onboard, otherwise you spend your life trying to catch up.

In the last ten years, social media has developed a new visual language that the whole world can speak, thanks to photography and the power of imagery. This universal language has made it possible to make a real difference to the world we live in. It’s brought to the forefront challenges people face and we’ve been able to come together as a global community to figure out the solution, changing the lives of thousands of people across the world.

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James has 22 years experience as a journalist, serving as editor of Digital Camera World for 6 of them. He started working in the photography industry in 2014, product testing and shooting ad campaigns for Olympus, as well as clients like Aston Martin Racing, Elinchrom and L'Oréal. An Olympus, Canon and Hasselblad shooter, he has a wealth of knowledge on cameras of all makes.

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