Muzafar Ali

After former Afghan refugee and photographer, Muzafar Ali, discovers that Afghans have been an integral part of Australia for over 160 years, he begins to photograph their descendants in a search to define his own Afghan-Australian identity. The Cameleer Descendants are a mix of Aboriginal, Afghan and Colonial Australian and as Muzafar meets and connects with the resilient but traumatised community he learns about his new country’s complicated history. His journey is interrupted when Afghanistan is handed back to the Taliban by the US and International Forces, and he races to help his friends and colleagues left behind.

In December 2012, Muzafar Ali and his wife Nagina escaped the Taliban in Afghanistan. They found themselves living in Indonesia as refugees when Australia ‘stopped the boats’. Determined to do something, they started a small two room school, which soon became the hub of a community and the most successful refugee-led initiative in the world.