Anas Modamani took a photo with the then chancellor when he was 18, before the image went around the world

When Angela Merkel stepped out of her car into the melee outside an asylum seekers’ shelter in Spandau, Berlin in September 2015, Anas Modamani, an 18-year-old Syrian refugee, had no idea who she was when he approached her to take a selfie.

“I assumed she was someone interested in seeing who we were, how we were doing,” he says, referring to the hundreds with whom he had arrived in the German capital the previous day, after a long and arduous journey from his war-torn homeland.

Anas Modamani took a photo with the then chancellor when he was 18, before the image went around the world

When Angela Merkel stepped out of her car into the melee outside an asylum seekers’ shelter in Spandau, Berlin in September 2015, Anas Modamani, an 18-year-old Syrian refugee, had no idea who she was when he approached her to take a selfie.

“I assumed she was someone interested in seeing who we were, how we were doing,” he says, referring to the hundreds with whom he had arrived in the German capital the previous day, after a long and arduous journey from his war-torn homeland.

Anas Modamani took a photo with the then chancellor when he was 18, before the image went around the world

When Angela Merkel stepped out of her car into the melee outside an asylum seekers’ shelter in Spandau, Berlin in September 2015, Anas Modamani, an 18-year-old Syrian refugee, had no idea who she was when he approached her to take a selfie.

“I assumed she was someone interested in seeing who we were, how we were doing,” he says, referring to the hundreds with whom he had arrived in the German capital the previous day, after a long and arduous journey from his war-torn homeland.