Interview performed and written by Cécile Richetta.

Mahnoor Malik, a young 21-year-old woman, was born and raised in Washington D.C., but really is a child of globalization: her parents are Pakistani immigrants, she fluently speaks five languages and came to Montreal to study Environmental Science at McGill University. Above all, Mahnoor travels, a lot. Through her photography artworks, she beautifully explores the privileged relationship that each human has with his or her surrounding environment. In the midst of the climate change crisis, realizing our ties to our habitat is an imperative that drives her philosophy and work.

After 7 years in the art world, Mahnoor found her style in photojournalism. It is for her the ideal way to convey her concepts and ideas, and her vision of the world. She humbly describes how the beauty of photography resides in its educative aspect—eventually increasing awareness of our environment and connecting people from all part of the world. Bright colours, rich scenes and regular individuals all come together in her work. The places she visited might be thousands of miles away from Montreal, and the subjects might speak another language or have a lifestyle that could not be more different than ours, yet we can only but relate to the humans that she photographed. Her work is psychological, rather than political; as she travels around the world, so do we.

Photographers like Mahnoor are a central component of our society: their pictures are keys that open the minds of their audience, educating them about the world they are living in, and eventually underlying the hidden similarities that we all share.

See more of Malik’s work on her website, facebook, and instagram.