Kadir van Lohuizen started working as a professional freelance photojournalist in 1988, covering the first intifada. In the years since, he has worked in many conflict areas in Africa, including Angola, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Liberia, and the Congo.

From 1990 to 1994, he covered the transition in South Africa from apartheid to democracy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he covered social issues in various corners of the former empire. He also went to North Korea and Mongolia. In 1997, he set out to travel the seven rivers of the world, from source to mouth, covering daily life along these lifelines. In 2004, he went back to Angola, Sierra Leone, and the Congo to portray the diamond industry, following the diamonds from the mines to consumer markets in the Western world. The exhibition of his photographs has traveled worldwide, even visiting the mining areas of Congo, Angola, and Sierra Leone.

In 2004, von Lohuizen joined Stanley Greene (also a Katrina Media Fellow) and six other photographers to document violence against women across the globe. Recently, van Lohuizen covered conflicts in Darfur, Chad, and Lebanon.

In 2006, he and Greene co-founded the magazine The Issue.

Currently van Lohuizen is continuing his work on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; he has made several trips to the Gulf Coast. He's also working on a project he began in 2006, a visual investigation of migration in the Americas, which has taken him from Tierra del Fuego (Patagonia) to northern Alaska.

In 1998, van Lohuizen won the most prestigious Dutch award in photojournalism, "de Zilveren Camera," for his story on Rwandan refugees in Zaire. For the same story, he received the second-prize Spot News prize at World Press Photo. In 2000 and 2005 he won the Dick Scherpenzeel prize in Holland for best reporting on the developing world. In 2006 he won the prize for investigative journalism in Holland and Belgium, for his story on the diamond industry; for the same story he received a second prize, contemporary issues at World Press Photo. In 2007 he won the Kees Scherer prize for best photobook in Holland in the last two years. He also won a PDN annual award in the United States for his work in Chad.

Kadir van Lohuizen has published four books: Waar twee olifanten vechten (Civil War in Mozambique, 1992); www.tibet.chin.com, on the China-fication of Tibet (1999); Aderen, on the seven rivers in the world (2003); and Diamond Matters (2005), published by Mets & Schilt publishers and Dewi Lewis. Van Lohuizen has published in numerous magazines and newspapers such as Vrij Nederland, de Volkskrant, NRC Handelsblad, Le Monde, Liberation, The Guardian, The Observer, Independent Sunday Review, New York Times Magazine, Time, Paris Match, Newsweek, and GEO, and has worked reguarly for Medecins sans Frontieres since 1990. In 2000 and 2002, van Lohuizen was a jury member for World Press Photo, for which he has taught several workshops.

Before van Lohuizen became a photographer, he was a sailor. He was also an activist in the Dutch squatter movement, and he started a shelter for the homeless and drug addicts in Holland.