Canon Ambassador Gulshan Khan's ongoing personal project, The Things We Carry With Us, documents South African Muslims, a community to which she belongs. In this image, a girl rides the carousel at the Sultan Bahu Centre fete in Johannesburg, South Africa. Taken on a Canon EOS 5D Mark III (now succeeded by the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV) with a Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM lens (now succeeded by the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM) at 1/80 sec, f/2 and ISO640. © Gulshan Khan
"Photography is a language we can use to communicate what we are seeing," says South African photojournalist and Canon Ambassador Gulshan Khan. "My projects have always arisen from some sort of gap I see, something I feel strongly about that needs highlighting or commenting on. No matter what I'm photographing, it's always linked to the context of historical social justice and human rights."
Gulshan only became a professional photographer in 2017, but her output since then has been prolific. Her work has focused on subjects including Muslims in contemporary South Africa, as well as a range of issues related to plastic pollution, access to water and sanitation, safe housing, gender and healthcare.
She was the first African woman to be hired by international news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), and her images have been featured in major publications including National Geographic, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Gulshan has also worked with non-governmental organisations such as the United Nations Population Fund. She is a National Geographic Explorer and received the HIPA Emerging Person in Photography Award in 2020.