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Yousef Khanfar

Yousef Khanfar is an award-winning international author, photographer, and humanitarian, whose images and messages transcend the dark corridors of our world and take us to places of splendor where we can find peace and humanity.

Of Palestinian origin, Yousef was born and raised in Kuwait, where he grew up exposed to images of war and violence. He needed a voice to express his inner turbulence and photography gave him that voice. As he has said, “I have chosen to carry my camera and pen instead of guns, and promote peace around the world; I believe peace is a finer horse to ride than violence.”

At seventeen, he left for the United States, where he continues to reside and where he has found an immense variety of charming sceneries. He distilled the beauty he saw around him with his camera, and as Ken Whitmire, former President of the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum said, “Out of the Arabian Peninsula, came a lone and landless photographer who has listened to and chased the light like a predator for twenty years. He has created a breath-taking and dazzling body of work.”

Throughout the years, Yousef Khanfar has captured the portraits of some of the most powerful and important figures of our time including Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (The U.S. Supreme Court), Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (House of Lords in London), Sir David Wynne (British Sculpture), Leona Mitchell (Opera Soprano), Tariq Ramadan (a Swiss academic, philosopher and writer), Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe (St. Monica’s Girls School, Uganda), Marina Carr (Irish writer), Antonio Grimaldi (Fashion designer), Bill Toledo (Navajo Wind Talker), and many more.

Yousef’s work has been featured in magazines including: Oprah, International Photo Art, Amateur Photographer, Oklahoma Today, Persimmon Hill, Photo Life, Outdoor Photographer, Nature’s Best, Soura, America Photo, and many others. His art has been collected and exhibited in galleries, cultural centers and museums worldwide, and his work is included in the permanent collection of the International Photography Hall of Fame.

Yousef’s images and messages continue to seduce us, leaving us spell-bound and perpetually fascinated by the visible and invisible shadows, by the loud and quiet chaos, by the breathing and breathless light which insists that harmony exists, and that peace is an attainable possibility.